LlBRAh/ OF CONGRESS. 

Shelf -.-/^-^T^ ^ 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



UNDER THE OLIVE 



"The great of old! 
The dead, but sceptred sovereigns, who still rule 
Our spirits from their urns " 



/; 



?3 



BOSTON 
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 

1881 



-:^ 






Copyright, 1880, 
By filRS. ANNIE FIELDS 



The Riverside Press, Cambridge: 
Stereotyped and Printed by II. 0. Houghton & Co. 



CONTENTS. 

¥-^ 

PAaE 

Prelude 1 

To THE Lyric Muse 9 

To THE Poetess 13 

The Last Contest of JEschylus . . 17 

Sophocles 25 

Euripides 35 

The Lantern of Sestos 41 

Helena 61 

Herakles 77 

Artemis 89 

Antinous 97 

Achilles 105 

Aphrodite of Melos 113 

Theocritus 121 

At the Forge 125 

Elegy to Daphnis 129 



iv CONTENTS. 

PAGB 

Clytia 135 

The Return op Persephone . . . 139 

Not by Will and not by Striving . . 187 
Translations : 

Anacreon's Grave 193 

Musagetes 194 

The Nightingale 196 

Pandora 197 

Notes 277 



PRELUDE. 



PRELUDE. 



RAGRANCE of youth, 
With thy light and thy joy, 
Thy rapture and truth ; 
Thou art not man's toy, 

Thou shalt break not nor vanish, 

Nor thee shall any destroy ! 




Youth must ever endure 

In the heart of the pure, 

And the leaves be uncurled 

That sleep in the bosom of spring ; 

And the banners unfurled 

Of the flower de luce ; 

They bring truce 

To winter and labor, they sing 

The beginning, 



UNDER THE OLIVE. 

The tale of the garden, 
Where after the heat of the day man may 
rest. 

But the world has grown old, 

And forgets to be blest, 

And to laugh in the garden at noon ; 

He is gray, 

He remembers the passions of men ; 

For their sake 

He is sad, he is cold. 

And cries, " Behold death cometh soon." 

youth of the world, 
Thou wert sweet ! 

In thy bud 

Slept nor canker nor pain ; 

In the blood 

Of thy grape was no frost and no rain ; 

1 love thee ! I follow thy feet ! 
The youth of my heart. 

And the deathless fire 

Leap to embrace thee : 

And nigher, and nigher. 

Through the darkness of grief and the 

smart, 
Thy form do I see. 



PRELUDE. 5 

But the tremulous hand of the years 
Has brought me a friend. 
Beautiful gift beyond price ! 
Beyond loss, beyond tears ! 
Hither she stands, clad in a veil. 
O thou youth of the world ! 
She was a stranger to thee. 
Thou didst fear her and flee. 

Sorrow is her name ; 

And the face of Sorrow is pale ; 

But her heart is aflame 

With a fire no winter can tame. 

Her love will not bend 

To the storm. 

To the voices of pleasure, 

Nor faint in the arms of the earth ; 

But she f oUoweth* ever the form 

Of the Master whose promise is sure. 

Who knows both our death and our birth. 

Sorrow, thou gift of time ! 
What were man's day without thee ! 
Thou art his prime, and nought 
Can sever his thought 



UNDER THE OLIVE. 

Utterly from tins earthly sea, 
Till thy hand be laid within his, 
And thy tender lips 

Give to thine own, thy chosen, the sacred 
kiss. 

Fear her not ! 

Stilly the bird slips 

Into the heart of the tree ; 

We had forgot, 

Save for her, 

Love is less brief than the spring. 

She is the worshipper ! 

Every green thing. 

The passing of clouds, 

The shadow of birds, 

And wandering in the garden-land that lies 

Between the pinnacles of fame and the 

great sea. 
Are dear to her. 

Dear to her eyes 

Are the white-breasted youth, 

And clear-cut shadows of the olive boughs; 

The slender maid, 



PRELUDE. 7 

White oxen with calm brows, 
And grace that shrouds 
The hero unafraid. 

But ah ! they loved her not and they have 

passed. 
Weeping they struggled with resistless waves : 
Then in the vast unknown abysm they cast 
Their mighty limbs, 
And sank to wander in dark caves. 

If, Sorrow, we 'have loved thee over well. 

And have forgot to frame the sacred hymns 

To the young year or the late ripening vine. 

And learned instead some piteous tale to tell. 

Thou wilt forgive the hearts that must repine. 

Thy heart is brave ! 

Thou dost not waste thyself in tears. 

But standest on the hillock of the grave 

To point us higher with the greatening years. 



TO THE LYRIC MUSE. 



TO THE LYRIC MUSE. 

WRITTEN IN AUTUMN. 

HY dost thou linger, now the lamps 
are out ! 
Why dost thou stay, the roses being 
dead ! 

What is thy joy, now the white swan is fled 
To southern gardens lapped by southern seas ! 
No more for thee the laughter and the shout, 
Nor youthful forms outstretched in summer 
ease. 




No more, and yet thy pallid figure roams 
Adown the alleys, over faded leaves, 
And where through misty beams the grape still 
weaves 



12 UNDER THE OLIVE. 

A broken tracery on the faded grass; 
Over what unseen bed of amaranth comes 
Odor to thee, our sense knows not, alas ! 

Thy darkling passion now doth seem to feed 
On briny perfumes of the eastern gale ; 
Vapors of morning fold thee in their veil ; 
And in the noonday silently rain down 
Out of bright skies the acorn and the seed ; 
Yet dost thou breathe a rapture all thine own. 

Wilt thou not show me where thy spirit feeds, 
And where the roses of thy desire still bloom, 
The swan indeed being fled, and earth a tomb ! 
Wilt thou not bring me where the wondrous 

voice. 
Hiding with spring-time in the falling seeds, 
May bid the heart of dying men reioice ! 



TO THE POETESS. 



TO THE POETESS. 




AUGHTER of Love ! Out of the 
flowing river, 
Bearing tlie tide of life upon its bil- 
low, 

Down to that gulf where love and song to- 
gether 

Sink and must perish : 
Out of that fatal and resistless current, 
One little song of thine to thy great mother, 
Treasured upon the heart of earth forever, 
Alone is rescued. 



Yet when spring comes, and weary is the 

spirit, 
When love is here, but absent is the lover. 
And life is here, and only love is dying, 

Then turn we, longing. 



16 UNDER TEE OLIVE. 

Singer to tliee ! Through ages unforgotten ; 
Where beats the heart of one who in her lov- 
ing 
Sang, all for love, and gave herself in singing 
To the sea's bosom. 



THE LAST CONTEST OF 
^SCHYLUS. 



2 



THE LAST CONTEST OF JESCHY- 
LUS. 




ILENCE from out the arch of meas- 
ureless heaven 
Looked down upon the foaming sea 
of men, 
Where grace and beauty and the strength of 

earth 
Filled Athens' amphitheatre to its verge. 
The limitless horizon of her pride 
Widened that day in Greece, when there re- 
turned 
Kimon, and brought the bones of Theseus 

home. 
Then many a singer offered up his song ; 
But ^schylus, with weight of many years 
O'erladen, master of the tragic art, 



20 UNDER THE OLIVE. 

Wearing both age and honor in one crown, 
Green laurel, but o'ersilvered, led the way. 
The myriad-braided voices sprang like one, 
Up to the stillness as the poet trod 
That stage once more, where glory oft had 

stooped 
From the bright heaven and kissed him as her 

child. 
The leaves of glory's crown were still the same, 
From spring-time round through all the sea- 
sons' change. 
Or grown more beautiful after summers' past. 
Now in the falling autumn, while the winds 
Of winter blew across his scanty days. 
He gathered up life's embers, laid thereto 
The fires of slow experience, till uprose 
Again therefrom the poet's magic forms. 
Beckoning the eye of fame once more to earth. 
Proudly he bore a scroll, though heavy age 
Delayed his feet, and proudly laid it down 
Before the judges ; then he passed as one 
Whose duty done turns him to other thoughts. 
But in the train that followed, as must be 
Forever in the footsteps of the great. 
Came a long line of weaklier aspirants, 



THE LAST CONTEST OF ^SCHYLUS. 21 

Who make desire co-equal with the deed, 

Or gazing at the sun of self, see blots 

Where the great sun should be ! These also 

passed 
Before the patient judges, with their scrolls. 
Last in the train came one, the youngest form 
And noblest, moving in true harmony 
To the glad sound of music still prolonged, 
And wearing on his brow the light that shines 
From the first coming star, ere sunset dies. 
And ^schylus loved the boy, whom, when he 

heard 
The people greet, he turned and smiled on 

him; 
He saw not that the youth had laid a scroll, 
Even he, and proudly, at the judges' feet. 

But now the games succeeded, then a pause, 
And after came the judges with the scrolls; 
Two scrolls, not one, as in departed years. 
And this saw none but the youth, Sophocles, 
Who stood with head erect and shining eyes, 
As if the beacon of some promised land 
Caught his strong vision and entranced it there. 
Then while the earth made mimicry of heaven 



22 UNDER THE OLIVE. 

With stillness, calmly spake the mightiest 

judge : 
' ' O ^schylus ! The father of our song ! 
Athenian m;ister of the tragic lyre 
Thou the incomparable ! Swayer of strong 

hearts ! 
Immortal minstrel of immortal deeds ! 
The autumn grows apace, aijd all must die ; 
Soon winter comes, and silence. JEschylus ! 
After that silence laughs the tuneful spring ! 
Read'st thou our meaning through this slender 

veil 
Of nature's weaving? Sophocles, stand forth ! 
Behold fame calls thee to her loftiest seat, 
And bids thee wear her crown. Stand forth, 

I say ! " 
Then, like a fawn, the youthful poet sprang 
From the dark thicket of new crowding friends, 
And stood, a straight, lithe form with gentle 

mien, 
Crowned first with light of happiness and 

youth. 

But -^schylus, the old man, bending lower 
Under this new chief weight of all the years, 



THE LAST CONTEST OF JESCHYLUS. 23 

Turned from that scene, turned from the shout- 
ing crowd, 

Whose every voice wounded his dying soul 

With arrows poison-dipped, and walked alone, 

Forgotten, under plane-trees, by the stream. 

" The last! The last ! Have I no more to 
do 

With this sweet world ! Is the bright morn- 
ing now 

No longer fraught for me with crowding song ! 

Will evening bring no unsought fruitage home! 

Must the days pass and these poor lips be 
dumb, 

While strewing leaves sing falling through the 
air. 

And autumn gathers in her richest fruit ! 

Where is my spring departed ! Where, O 
gods ! 

Within my spirit still the building birds 

I hear, with voice more tender than when 
leaves 

Are budding and the happy earth is gay. 

Am I, indeed, grown dumb for evermore! 

Take me, O bark I Take me thou flowing 
stream ! 



24 UNDER THE OLIVE. 

Who knowest nought of death save when thy 

waves 
Rush to new hfe upon the ocean's breast. 
Bear thou nie singing to the under world ! 
From earth's lone pastures to the changeless 

sea 
Beyond the caves of death, where life is young. 



SOPHOCLES. 



SOPHOCLES. 

Enter the son and grandson of Sophocles, Iophon and 
the YouKG Sophocles. 




IOPHON. 

AM the elder ! 

YOUNG SOPHOCLES. 

And I the latest born ! 
Therefore, perchance, of all the best beloved. 

IOPHON. 

Yet right is mine, I am the lawful heir. 



YOUNG SOPHOCLES. 

Is it not right to give what is om- own 
As we would list? 



28 UNDER THE OLIVE. 



Holds a just claim. 



lOPHON. 

No ! Always the first-born 



YOUNG SOPHOCLES. 

Indeed I know tliat well, 
But thou dost claim the whole or largest part. 

lOPHON. 

And justly, too 1 Thou art a bastard son. 

YOUNG SOPHOCLES. 

Better be that and dutiful, than as thou. 

lOPHON. 

Ha ! What sayest thou ? Is it, then, come to 

this ! 

[They seize their weapons. 

Sophocles enters, bowed with years. He sjyeaTcs. 

Children, I pray, if still ye love me, hold ! 

Go, lophon, they call thee in the courts ! 

To thy book, Sophocles, and the sounding 

rhyme. 

\They go out. 



SOPHOCLES. 29 

What shall be done with these two braggart 

boys ? 
In their first youth I joyed in their warm blood, 
And took too little heed lest want of love 
Might breed an angry discord at the last ; 
And now behold they have reached man's es- 
tate, 
But in the garden of their hearts is found 
No fruit or blossom of fraternal good. 

Messenger enters and speaks. 
Sophocles, thou art summoned to the courts. 

SOPHOCLES. 

Upon what plea am I thus hither called? 

MESSENGER. 

To prove how old thou art, and how unfit 
Justly to give away the goods thou hast. 

SOPHOCLES. 

This, lophon, alas ! must be thy deed ! 
Hath jealousy thee taught to hate thy sire? 
The gods give strength and arm me with their 
love ! 



30 UNDER THE OLIVE. 

Must the world seek to find the ravages, 
The rents and fissures of these wintry years, 
Young love should cover with the leaves of 

spring ! 
Do men seek these ! Then come, my (Edipus! 
Thou shalt with me, companion of my age ! 
[^He takes tenderly in his hand the scroll containing 
his (Edipus Coloneus. They go out. 

Scene: The Court Room. Judges, a large con- 
course of people, and the son and grandson of Soph- 
ocles. Enter Messenger, followed by the aged poet 
who bears the scroll. 

gOPHOCT.ES. 

Bowed half with age and half with reverence, 

thus, 
I, Sophocles, now answer to your call ; 
Questioned have I the cause and the reason 

learned. 
Lo, I am here that all the world may see 
These feeble limbs that signal of decay ! 
But, know ye, ere the aged oak must die, 
Long after the strong years have bent his form, 
The spring still gently weaves a leafy crown. 
Fresh as of yore to deck his wintry head. 



SOPHOCLES. 31 

And now, O people mine, who have loved my 

song. 
Ye shall be judges if the spring have brought 
Late unto me, the aged oak, a crown. 
Hear ye once more, ere yet the river of sleep 
Bear me away far on its darkening tide. 
The music breathed upon me from these fields. 
If to your ears, alas! the shattered strings 
No longer sing, but breathe a discord harsh, 
I will return and draw this mantle close 
About my head and lay me down to die. 
But if ye hear the wonted spirit call. 
Framing the natural song that fills this world 
To a diviner form, then shall ye all believe 
The love I bear to those most near to me 
Is living still, and living cannot wrong; 
To me, it seems, the love I bear to thee, 
Athens, blooms fresh as .violets in yon wood. 
Making new spring within this aged breast. , 
[^e reads the chorus in praise of the sacred grove 

of Colonus. 

STROPHE. 

I. 

♦* Stranger ! The station of stallions, 
Fairest of spots hast thou chosen, 



32 UNDER THE OLIVE. 

Colonus the glistening. 

Here in fresh blooming thickets 

The nightingale hides her ; 

And pours her sweet sorrow 

'Mid thick-growing ivy and shadows the gods 

love; 
Here trees with fruit laden, 
By storm-winds untouched, 
And by mortals unshaken ; 
Here Bacchus the reveller, 
Chief loves to wander, 
By nymph-gods encircled." 

ANTISTROPHE. 

I. 

*' And here on this spot dews of heaven 
Have watered and fed fair Narcissus, 
Each day freshly blooming, 
For time-honored wreaths of two goddesses ; 
And here is the golden-leaved crocus, 
And here are unsealed the sleepless 
Streams of Kephissos, 
That fail not, but ever are rippling 
Through plains and rich pastures. 
Gathering the unsullied rain drops 



SOPHOCLES. 33 

From wide-breasted liill-sides, 
Scorned hy no choir of the Muses, 
Nor yet by gold-reined Aphrodite." 



II. 
" Here marvel unknown unto Asia, 
Or unto the famed isle, the Dorian, 
Grows un nursed of the gardener ; 
Blue-green olive grove, 
Blest of her children. 
Terror of the enemy, 
Of this green earth the glory ! 
Never in blossom, 
Nor in fading of autumn. 
Shall command slay thy beauty ; 
For Zeus the protector 
Of fruits watches ever, 
And blue-eyed Athene." 

ANTISTEOPHE. 
II. 

Praise all others excelling 
I bring for thy chief pride, thy greatest, 
Gift of our father, the sea-god ; 
3 



34 UNDER THE OLIVE. 

Taming of horses and waters, 

These are the pride of our mother, 

Granted our home and our city, 

Poseidon, by thee ; 

Thou, the bridle subduing, 

First brought to these waysides, 

And the oar too, shapely, foam-flinging. 

Beckoning the crowd, hundred-footed, 

Of Nereids following ever. 

And dancing around in the billows." 

Land of all lands, with loftiest praises crowned. 
Prove now if thou deserve this shining wreath. 

He is silent. The jjeople shout. 
Sophocles, Child of Athens ! The deathless 
one I 
[5e is borne away triumphant upon the shoulders 

of the people. 



EURIPIDES. 



EURIPIDES. 




EH OLD I am the third ! Third 
comer and third choice ! 
The godliest one hath passed ! yet 
the blue dome of heaven 
Echoes his word repeated through the un- 
measured air, 
Bidding the people bow and worship the gods 

and their deeds. 
Is there one to lead them now and bring them 

forth to the seats, 
Circle on circle filled with a nation waiting to 

hear ! 
JEschylus gone, — who else may interpret the 

gods to men ! 
Time is less long than his fame, yet do men 

ask a new thing. 
I could not do the work of my master, of Ms- 
chylus, no ! 



38 UNDER THE OLIVE. 

But my heart is stirred for the heart of a peo- 
ple waiting for song, 
Waiting to hear of beauty and joy and a love 

divine 
Which sleep in the darkest ways and wake to 

a master's wand. 
Patience, my heart ! Have I not said that I 

was the third ! 
Sophocles now is king, and royally weareth the 

crown. 
See how the people follow, see how they crowd 

to the seats, 
Breathing the breath of Colonus brought on 

his picturing words. 
See how they weep with Antigone, noblest sis- 
ter and child. 
Awed, by her presence enchanted, and CEdipus 

god-smitten, old. 
Is there no place for me ! Why with a breast 

grown warm. 
Warm with desire to answer their thoughts and 

questioning eyes. 
That turn to the east and west, and ask of the 

north and south. 
Turning no more to their gods but keeping 

aloof in their dread, 



EURIPIDES. 39 

Is there no room for another, for me, whose 

spirit hath known 
Sorrow of Hfe and sorrow of death and the 

hero's soul ? 
One who hath known the sweetness of woman, 

her glory and crown ? 
One who hath known of her shame, deepest 

blackness of earth ? 
Hear me, hear me, ye people ! Long have I 

wrought for your love, 
Leading you into the clear bright air from the 

noise of the courts. 
Telling you nought of the gods, for what can I 

know of their ways 1 
But the ways of our brothers we see, we feel 

both their sadness and pain. 
Polyxena dying for freedom, and they who 

have died for truth. 
Others, those glad bright spirits, who died for 

love, 
These are of us! Ah, brothers and sisters, our 

joy and our pain 
Are like unto theirs ! Hear ye the music, see 

but the light 
Breathed from these living words, or kindled 

by death's dim torch. 



40 ' UNDER THE OLIVE. 

Suddenly was he still; closed were those plead- 
ing lips: 

Ended the long desire, ended laborious days ; 

Silent the fountain of song from rivulet and 
from fell. 

Sophocles came, the master, the old man, leav- 
ing a tear 

Ages have loved to treasure there on Euripides* 
grave. 

Latest born of the three ! Who shall dare 

name the most great ! 
Poet whose air repeated saved the Athenian 

walls. 
Grieving for sad Electra, still do thy warm 

tears fall ! 
Gods of Greece ! ye are cold and old as marble 

and clay; 
Songs of Euripides ! young are ye, fresh as the 

shade of Cithaeron. 



THE LANTERN OF SESTOS. 



THE LANTERN OF SESTOS. 




ATERS of song, ever flowing, that 
whisper of truth and fulfillment, 
Solemn your voices, yet sweet, foun- 
tains of healing; to men. 



Old is the legend of lovers the world is forever 

repeating. 
Old as the years and yet young, glad as the 

vision of dawn ; 
Old as the temples of Kypris, whose fragments 

of beauty we worship, 
• Young as the blood that now leaps fresh with 

the fountains of June. 
Virgil hath sung of the story, recounted by 

Ovid and Statins, 
Musaeus, sweetest of all, sad as the autumn's 

decay ; 



44 UNDER THE OLIVE. 

Carven by him it remains wlio hath used fair 

Greek words for his chisel, 
Like to a cameo- shell clasping the robe of a 

nymph. 
Bm-dened with lustre and loss, the tale as by 

Marlowe repeated ; 
Thus is it age by age caught to the heart of 

mankind. 
Lovers whose glances now meet and now bend 

to the page ye are reading, 
Are there no billows outstretched between ye 

and your love? 
Happy are ye and good then pitiful are ye to 

others. 
Swept by adversity's wave far from the feet 

they adore. 

High was the tower and windy where Hero 

lonely abiding 
Fed the desires of a maid, whispering her heart 

unto none; 
There on the verge of the ocean she watched 

from her height for the morning. 
Where the motionless waves lay unstirred, fired 

by no dart of the sun, 



THE LANTERN OF SESTOS. 45 

Till, wakened at last and pierced by his flames, 

she beheld like a blossom 
Dawn lying rosy and soft rocked on the breast 

of the sea. 
When the day broadened she sought with her 

handmaid the temple of Kypris, 
Praying the goddess of love safely her servant 

to keep; 
Ended her orison, straight she returned to her 

chamber of silence, 
Far from the dance, and shut far from the 

music of youth. 
Now the glad season approached, the yearly 

feast of Adonis, 
When women to worship went forth, and 

youths to gaze on the maids. 
There in the temple's most holy recesses Hero 

long lingered, 
Hidden from thoughts of the world, seen by no 

eye of the crowd. 
Soft fell the lawn of her robe round the grace 

of her limbs low declining. 
Her veil, half forgotten, slipped down from her 

ivory throat. 
Lost in the shadowy shrine while her spirit 

arose in petition, 



46 UNDER THE OLIVE. 

Lover she knew not, nor one clothed there in 

beauty and strength. 
He had seen her and followed her hither with 

eyes full of ardor, 
Noble and pure, audacious to die or to win. 
Lingered he there impatient, till all her devo- 
tions were ended, 
Hoping to hear but her voice, longing to touch 

but her hand. 
Ardent and strong and beautiful was he far 

above others. 
Daring far above all, he who drew near to her 

shrine. 
Speaking now he addressed her, " Abydos, 

home of my fathers, 
Stands divided from thee; only by ships may 

we come, 
Yet there dwells not in Abydos, nor in the 

wide region of Sestos, 
One who moveth my heart save when it dwell- 

eth with thee. 
Hear ye the words I would speak, nor fear a 

foe in thy lover. 
One who before thy Queen, Kypris the goddess,- 

now prays 



THE LANTERN OF SESTOS. 47 

Permission to touch and to kiss but thy rossy- 

tipped fingers, 
Gaze in thine eyes, and perchance whisper the 

accents of love." 
Downcast her vision became, and the blood her 

bright shoulder suffusing. 
Told all the tale of her thought, ere her slow 

lips gave response; 
Gently she turned her aside, nor answered his 

tender assurance, 
Left not the shade nor the shrine, gave not her 

hand unto him. 
But swift is the arrow of Love, and his missive 

ethereal speeding 
Straight from the young man's heart entered 

the breast of the maid. 
Then he prayed her again to tell him her name 

and her story. 
Asking, " Where is thy home, where may I 

seek thee, my love? " 
"I am Hero," she said, "and my home is 

washed by the ocean. 
Left in yon tower alone, save for one hand- 
maid now old ; 
Music is none for me if no voice of the sea-bird 

be calling. 



48 UNDER TEE OLIVE. 

Dance there is none, but the dance led by the 

waves on the strand. 
High is ray chamber and silent, the pathway 

unknown unto any 
Save to the jewels of the air borne on their 

pinions of flame. 
Flitting and stirring with kisses the jars of 

alyssum and lilies 
Bowering my casement and breathing of valleys 

and rills." 
Pausing again, while the blood all her throat 

and her forehead was staining : 
*' Why do I say this to thee? I but a stranger, 

a maid ! ' ' 
Then he returned : " Nay rather to me may 

my words be forgiven. 
Heated with fires of the heart, heated with 

flames of desire! 
Here in this sacred enclosure, by the mother of 

love thus protected, 
Nought can betray or alarm, nothing can lead 

thee astray. 
Turn not aside, nor hide thus from me thy face 

and its meaning. 
Give me at least thy hand, visible token of 

peace." 



THE LANTERN OF SESTOS. 49 

Shyly she gave him her hand, and swiftly his 
kisses descended, 

Rained down over it, lo! till it blushed in re- 
turn. 

" Wilt thou not yield, then," he cried, " yield 
thyself unto my honor. 

Beautiful maiden of Sestos, thou, the fairest of 
all? 

Wilt thou not bid me to come unto thy window 
forsaken, 

Bid me to comfort thee there, nevermore lonely 
or sad ? 

Hither the goddess hath led me that I hence- 
forth may protect thee. 

Thee, the chosen of gods, light of my life and 
my bride." 

Turning her glances upon him, while she stood 
there in maiden confusion, 

Seeing his beauty and grace, seeing his honor 
and truth, 

" Tell me," she answered, " the name thou 
dost bear and the name of thy parents ; 

Tell me thy story of life, tell me the feats thou 
hast done ; 
4 



60 UNDER THE OLIVE. 

Thou hast told me abeady thy home is afar in 

Abydos, 
How canst thou meet me unseen, borne by no 

white-winged ship?" 
" I am Leander," he said, " the love-crowned 

husband of Hero! 
These strong limbs be my ship ! Lamp of my 

life, be my star ! 
Now are the nights of May, and the soft-veiled 

skies of the spring-time 
Such as lovers must love, shadows of night and 

the shrine. 
Late, when the fires of the town are extin- 
guished, thy lamp for my beacon, 
Swiftly these limbs shall cleave waters blue as 

the sky." 
" See where, already !" she cried, " are the 

feet of my handmaid approaching, 
Long are the hours we must wait, brief are the 

moments of love I " 
Drooping she turned unto him and extended 

her arms in acceptance. 
Sinking with senses half drowned, lost in that 

one short embrace. 



THE LANTERN OF SESTOS. 51 

"Farewell!" he murmured, "farewell, till the 
moon of May hath turned from us, 

Hanging, a fragment of mist, faint on the fore- 
head of day. 

Goddess, and mother of love, whose recesses 
have given us slielter. 

Bring me to answer her signal, bring me to find 
her, my bride ! " 

Slowly the mantle of night was spread o'er the 

face of Abydos, 
Slowly shone out the stars swung in the purple 

expanse, 
Still down the west the heavens were stained 

with remembering crimson, 
Lonely the lover remained pacing the picturing 

sands. 
One by one from afar the watch-towers caught 

and were kindled. 
Ghost-like sails faded out, lost in the moonless 

expanse; 
Slowly, more slowly, now were the fires of 

Sestos extinguished. 
Night, like a motionless veil, hid all the rim of 

the earth. 



52 UNDER THE OLIVE. 

Restless the waves as his spirit with their way- 
ward glances inviting, 

White-lipped, even in peace, noisy and strong 
at their play; 

" Come ! They ever are calling, Come ! to our 
caverns unsounded", 

Beautiful harbors of peace, strange and untrod- 
den by man." 

Heeded he not their vain music, dreamed he of 
nought save her beacon ; 

Star which should rise sole for him, lit in the 
heart of his love. 

" True is my darling, most true ! yet hath she 
the signal forgotten ! ' ' 

Hardly the words were said when her lamp 
shot a flame from afar; 

Swiftly his mantle he seized, and swift round 
his forehead he bound it, 

Then in the waters he plunged, white as the 
shafts of her shrine. 

Down from the height of her chamber noise- 
lessly Hero descended, 

Stepped from the postern door out to the feet 
of the sea : 



THE LANTERN OF SESTOS. 53 

There in her arms she received her love, the 

voyager, wave-stained, 
Led him within, and his limbs washed and 

anointed with oil. 

Bride and bridegroom were there, but where 

was the feast of the bridal ! 
Wedding was there, yet where, guest of the 

wedding, wert thou ! 
Bliss of marriage was there, but absent the 

blessing of parents ! 
Silent the halls, and the hollows of the night 

were grown still. 

Many and many the hours through the too 

brief midnights of summer, 
Waiting the signal he stood, then plunged 

through seas to his bride. 
Thus lived Hero, a wife by night, and by day 

but a maiden. 
Till the flowers were faded and harvests ripened 

and billows were cold. 
Then followed the season of tempests, when 

gloomily shadowed 
Evening fell black, and the breeze died, and 

the waves were aflame; 



54 UNDER THE OLIVE. 

Noiselessly crept a deluge that whispered low 

to the ocean, 
Waking the winds in their wrath, sweeping the 

land with their might. 
Long that night waited Leander, but only the 

waves' wild blue lustre 
Lightened the awful dark shining in blackness 

profound. 
Twice had the morning arisen ere the force of 

the tempest was broken. 
Then came winter abroad, calling to land and 

to sea. 
Burnished like steel was the ocean's face, and 

the unmeasured forests 
Shook their long locks to the wind, sweeping 

the sky with their hair. 
Glad was the spirit of Hero, and spring was 

chaunting within her, 
Surely to-night shall the lamp lead her beloved 

to his own. 
High was the wind and mighty the sea, but de- 
sire was grown stronger, 
Silencing one and soothing the other to her 

mind. 
Clear-eyed and angry and strong was the sua 

in his early declining. 



THE LANTERN OF SESTOS. 55 

Hungry and angiy the waves drew themselves 

back from the shore; 
Angrily answered the wind-blast from each 

lofty coigne of her casement, 
Tenderly, patiently there, Hero awaited her 

love. 
Busily first from the height her lantern she 

bravely suspended, 
Then she folded her hands, nought was there 

left to be done. 
Midnight, with clangorous voices, to earth's 

dark bosom hath spoken, 
Hero, listening, descends, seeking the dark 

postern door; 
Rudely and fiercely the wind repels her, dis- 
puting her passage. 
Firmly, nay sternly, she urgeth and holdeth 

her ground. 
Ragged and rent are the clouds, by the might 

of ^olus driven. 
High are the waves that wash over the rocks 

to her feet, 
Dark is the sea, and dark is the vault where 

her heaven is hidden. 



56 UNDER THE OLIVE. 

Dark is her lamp! but alas! nought of that 

night can she know. 
Beaten by surges and beaten by wind, still 

alone doth she linger, 
Then, when he comes not, returns laden with 

grief to her place, 
^ow beholdeth she first her lantern by storm 

blasts extinguished. 
There in the dark must she sit, waiting till 

morning appear. 
How could she tell if the treacherous beacon 

had led him to venture, 
Bid him to try the deep, then had forsaken the 

trust. 
Slow are the hours, grief -weigh ted and heavy 

the tread of their footfall. 
Laden with pain they approach, fearful the 

greeting at last. 
Thus the slow feet of the dawn through the 

dim waste of darkness approached her, 
Heavily treading, as tread burdened bearers of 

woe. 
When with the earliest glimmer she leaned 

through the storm-shattered casement, 



THE LANTERN OF SEST08. 57 

There she sees, at the tower-foot, his fair form 

that she loves; 
There she finds in the dawn that the lamp in- 
deed is extinguished, 
Flame of a candle and lamp life-lighted, both 

as if one. 
None may hear, there are none to call, there 

are none who can succor! 
Down she casts herself, down she falls, on all 

that she loves. 
What were her life without him ! And what 

worth were the days thus divided ! 
Whither the unseen leads there will she follow 

his feet. 



Wrapt in the silence of sorrow, here endeth 

the tender Greek story. 
But thus the legend continues: There by the 

shore in high noon 
Multitudes gathered together and saw the glad 

sunshine adorning 
Whiteness of marble and limbs pressed closely 

each unto each. 
Absent were voices of hatred, and absent the 

censure of lovers. 



58 UNDER THE OLIVE. 

Youth was there, beauty and truth, — death 

was there, welcome for love ! 
Those who were standing by and who knew 

both the pain and the passion 
Uttered no word, nor did they who knew not 

the ashes nor flame. 
Speechless they entered the tower, and found 

there the lantern extinguished, 
Bore it away to Anteros and hung o'er his 

shrine. 
" Come ye," they cried, " O ye lovers, whose 

love knoweth nought but good fortune, 
Kindle this lantern afresh, here on the fane of 

the god." 
Loud was the voice of the people, on high was 

the beacon erected, 
But there forever unlighted through time it 

remains. 

Still, O thou treacherous lamp, thou dost hang 

in the eyes of all lovers ; 
Still do they laugh with the spring, glad in a 

joy that dies not. 
Long the procession enamored in passing has 

given it homage. 



THE LANTERN OF SESTOS. 59 

Yet do they linger not fearing lest joy shall 

take wing. 
Better a sorrow for love, they say, and the 

voices departed. 
Better than revelry, lamps relumed, and hearts 

that forget. 
Grief who sittest unchanging beside the shrine 

of these lovers, 
Sit ye by hearts that are true; whispering of 

love that dies not! 
What can be sorrow to these but a mantle, a 

sign, a possession. 
Folding them ever enwrapt, blest as Elisha of 

old! 
Clad not in raiments of darkness, nor shrouded 

in doubt and despondence, 
Rather a lamp in themselves, beacons of light 

unto men. 
Ye are but shadows to them who possess the 

passion immortal, 
Lantern forever unlit ! Night with thy silence 

and stars ! 

Take, ye devouring days ! the gold of youth, 
the desired things ; 



60 UNDER THE OLIVE. 

Leave ye but sorrow white-robed here by the 

feet dearly loved. 
She, the priestess, shall lead us, companion of 

evening: and mornino-, 
Till the one morning awake, knowing not 

shadow or ni<rht. 



HELENA. 



HELENA. 

All for my guilt and his deed, Zeus gives us a doom that is 
dreadful, 

Ever to live in the songs and to be a theme for the min- 
strels. 

Iliad. — E. Arnold. 

ICH fUhle mich so fern und doch so nah, 
Und sage nur zu gem : da bin ich 1 da ! 

Ich scheine mir verlebt und doch so neu 
In dich verwebt, dem Unbekannten treu. 

Helena. — Second Part of Faust. 



AM Helen of Argos, 
I am Helen of Sparta, 
I, the daughter of Egypt, 
I, the inflamer of Troy ; 
See me, Helen, still shining. 
There where shines great Achilles; 




64 UNDER THE OLIVE. 

Blossoms of summer I bring ye 
Born not of shadows nor dreams. 

Early from Argos he bore me, 
Theseus, inconstant of lovers; 
Early in Argos he bound me, 
He, Menelaus the King ; 
Queen of the court and of feasting. 
Queen of the hearth and the temple, 
Goddess and priestess and mother, 
Holding Hermione's hand. 

There in the chambers of purple, 
Fair as the statues he gathered, 
Worshipped by great Menelaus, 
I, his Helen, remained ; 
Pure as when Theseus snatched me, 
First from the temple of Dian, 
Dancing the dances of childhood, 
Bare to her ivory floors. 

Theseus snatched me and held me, 
Hiding me far in Aphidnai; 
Quickly I slipped from his covert, 
I, no longer enslaved. 



HELENA. 65 

Ah! Menelaus the gentle, 
Gently but strongly he bound me ; 
Lo! with the ships I departed, — 
Ships that were sailing for Troy. 

Paris had beckoned me hither; 
Waves were leaping around me. 
Whispering of freedom and gladness, 
Paris whispered of love; 
Thus in the meshes entangled 
Woven by hard Aphrodite, 
Lost was I, slave to her service, 
She, the compeller of men. 

There on the turrets of Troia, 
Watching the combat of heroes. 
There in the eye of the noble, 
Sent she a woman to me; 
Calling me hence to serve Paris, 
He, the lascivious, the perfumed, 
She, the compeller, she drove me 
Hence in the faces of all. 

Slave was I, bound was I, Helen! 
Once the queen of the hearth-side ; 
5 



66 UNDER THE OLIVE. 

Bond was I, scorned, yet the mother, 
Queen of Hermione's heart; 
Gazing on Hector the princely, — 
Dead, and Andromache weeping, 
Tears were not mine ! Alas deeper 
Lay my smart and my pain. 

Hector, my brother beloved ! 
Dear to me, far above others. 
Here on thy body lamenting 
I, too, echo thy praise! 
Listen, Andromache, listen! 
Out of the deepness of silence 
Calleth a voice unto thee: 

" Calm, O beloved, O dear one, 
Calm are the valleys of Orcus, 
Restful the streams and dim alleys 
Shut from the clamor of men ; 
Restful to him who has labored. 
Labored and loved and is waiting, — 
Waiting to hold in his bosom 
Child and mother again." 

Hear me, Andromache ; listen! 
This is for thee, but for Helen 



HELENA. 67 

All is voiceless and barren, 
Silent the valley of shades ; 
Faded her joy with the blossoms, 
Dead on the heart of the summer I 
Kypris, goddess, ah! free me. 
Slave and child of thy will. 

Long through the ages I suffered, 
Suffered the calling of lovers ; 
Down through the ages I followed, 
Won by the bidding of Faust; 
Strong, unsubdued, and immortal, 
I, the young mother of Sparta, 
Stand here and bring ye these blos- 
soms, 
Fresh as the children of spring. 

Down to the ships went the captives, 
Unwilling procession of sorrow, 
Cassandra behind Agamemnon, 
Andromache bound with the rest. 
I, Helen, walked with my husband ; 
Level my glance of pure azure. 
Rosy my cheeks, lest the Spartans 
Think less well of their kin or. 



68 UNDER THE OLIVE. 

Helen, that years could not alter, 
Nor bees that deflower the lilies, — 
Helen, child of immortals, 
Holding the reins of his steed; 
Thus through the gateway of Sparta, 
When the fires of Troy were extinguished, 
Proud in his gladness and glory. 
Proudly I brought them their king. 

One sang, " Base was their Helen; " 

I, standing far above splendor. 

Calm in the circle of godhead. 

Moved not by striving of men, 

Heard thus Stesichorus the singer, 

Mad raver, a poet, a mortal, 

While the gods and the heroes immortal 

Struck the perjurer blind with their glance. 

No longer he seeth where beauty 
Abideth untouched of the earth-stained; 
No more shall he mark in her coming 
Persephone's noiseless feet; 
No more, when Helen approacheth. 
Shall he know the star of her forehead. 
And Helen the false shall decoy him 
With wiles and tales of her own. 



HELENA. 69 

Lovers, ah lovers inconstant ! 

Ye have slain but the form and the semblance, 

Know ye your Helen has vanished 

And sleeps on a hero's breast. 

Hers is the fire undying, 

The light and the flame of the singer, 

The mariner's lamp and his beacon, 

His harbor of home and his rest. 

Half proudly ended thus the queen her tale, 
And ere the listener knew her notes were 

stilled 
Behold another singer took the strain. 

This other was a youth who once had loved, 
Or thought he loved, a maid who loved him 

not, 
And here he told the story of his love, 
Which was not love, alas ! the lady said ; 
She sat and sang thus to him in the dusk, 
And still at dusk he ever hears her song. 

" 'Twas in dim ages of the world; 
(The tale is true, too true !) 
When first the fires of passion curled 



70 UNDER THE OLIVE. 

The leaf-buds of the heart, and whirled 
Their ashes to the blue. 

*' In Dian's temple danced a child; 
(The tale is true, too true!) 
Brave Theseus there, with passion wild, 
Stole, stole away the dancing child, 
(The tale no more is new.) 

" Her brothers captured her again; 
(Too old the tale, too old !) 
She was their joy, she was their pain, 
Of Helen was their only strain; 
(Thus is the old tale told.) 

*' The king of Sparta sought her hand; 
(Too old the tale, too old !) 
No prince her beauty could withstand, 
Her fame was spread through every land; 
(The tale has not grown cold.) 

" The king of Sparta bore her home ; 
(Too true the tale, too true!) 
Through his vast halls her footsteps roanij 
And hearts are glad where'er she come; 
(O yes, the tale is true !) 



HELENA. 71 

** Upon Mount Ida there was one 
(The tale said) feeding sheep ; 
The goddess whispered him alone, 
He left her home of leaf and stone 
And sought the clouded deep. 

** He came by day to Sparta's walls ; 
(Ah me ! where was the king !) 
A welcome guest throughout the halls, 
And Helen, the fair queen, he calls, 
Her women dainties bring. 

" Thou shalt away with me, he said ; 
(In the tale, he whispered low.) 
A silver veil on the sea was spread, 
A snowy mantle about her head ; 
(Alas ! he whispered low.) 

*' Silent the glimmering statues stand; 
(The tale has all come true !) 
Silent the lovely Grecian land, 
Speechless the softly murmuring sand. 
And the waves the ship sailed through. 

'* What is fair, if false be fair! 
(The tale was never false.) 



72 UNDER THE OLIVE. 

Never hath faded the golden hair, 
Beauty of Helen unchanged and rare, 
Not false, nor faded, nor pale. 

' ' Never to Troy did Helen go ; 
(Say, canst thou read the song !) 
Never unfaith true Helen know; 
False Helen ! Away ! She is white as snow, 
Helen the queen of my song." 

The low mysterious wail wherewith he voiced 
The mystery of his singing scarce had ceased. 
When lo! another brought a little plaint 
Of love and death, and love that cannot die. 

** Ah, lonely, lonely is the wide blue sea, 
And lonely are the summer fields at noon, 
Yet the waves dance, and the fields laugh in 

glee. 
Though nought be left for me ! 

" Life may be joy to such as know not love! 
But we who know, know that our joy must die. 
And dying, carry onward, far above, 
The light by which we move. 



HELENA. 73 

*' Love is not less that may not all be seen ; 
But, watched for like the planet of the dawn, 
It beckons us behind a cloudy screen, 
While the waves roll between." 

And still another singer, with eyes bent 
Afar, as on that beacon light he gazed, 
Seen by the warder who, for ten long years, 
Swept the horizon toward the Trojan plains. 
Till the great day when rising into heaven 
The mountain tops rehearsed the flames of 

Troy,- 
Such was his gaze, as one who knew the light 
Were waiting to appear, and he could wait. 
Assured of victory and the day of peace : 
And thus he sang his song of Helena : — 

*' I follow thee, 
Kun to thee, as the streamlet to the main! 
What green repose for me ! 
No music and no luring sun or shade 
Can still the heat of my desire, O maid. 
Or my fond heart detain. 

" Thou lead'st me on! 
I struggle and forever I aspire, 



74 UNDER THE OLIVE. 

Till days and years be done. 
After thy feet how beautiful tlie vales I 
How beautiful, beyond Arabian tales, 
Apollo's golden fire! 

* ' I grasp, I fail ! 
I cannot seize the crystal cup she holds; 
I hear her sweet ' All hail ! ' 
Then faint and fall, and senseless lie and 

blind, 
Till waking, but her empty robe I find, 
Which my weak arm enfolds." 

Impatient for the end then lastly spake 
A carver in his pride: " Better than all 
Your shifting notes of love that cannot die 
The marble where the form of truth endures. 
There shall man's eye forever see her shape 
Uplifted to the gaze of hurrying crowds 
Who press down toward the ships to see her 

pass ; 
Not of the weeping company of those 
Who follow at the conqueror's nod is she, 
But with eyes downward bent and reddening 

blush 



HELENA. 75 

She walks, revolving many a sombre thought. 
Then, in his house of wood, with flaxen sails, 
She floats a queen across the fateful seas, 
Until the king restore her to her home. 
Thus ever to the future Helen stands, 
Carven triumphant in her chariot, 
Entering anew the unbarred Spartan gates." ^ 

He ceased ; but as the fluttering swallows meet 
In earliest autumn near some cove, nor hear 
Nor see intruders, learning busily 
Their future, or rehearsing happy days, 
Twittering of joys remembered ere they go 
Into the silence, whither we know not! 
So did this murmuring ring of singers fail. 
Perchance, to hear the carver, but still sang, 
In music half unheard for falling leaves, 
Of Helen, Helen, Helen, through the dale. 
And Helen, Helen, Helen, on the hills. 
Till with the winds the undying murmur slept. 

1 See bas-relief in the Campana Museum. 



HERAKLES. 



HERAKLES. 




.->|T^^-^^ORNING'S blue heaven wherein 
P^^^l bh'ds rest and float 

And rise to levels of new life ! a note 
Of joy dropping by chance as in a 
dream 
To one who wanders by a sunlit stream, 
And heard by him as he who waits and hears 
At length, amid the falling of his tears. 
The voice of love ; and while his heart is 

strained 
To bear joy's fullness, even then is pained 
By the loud moaning of prophetic seas, 
Drowning the pleasant laughter of the trees, 
And weaving in his bliss a thread of woe; 
Such is our day, such is our morning hour ! 
A gladness none can measure, heaven must 

know; 
A sadness that no season and no balm 



80 UNDER THE OLIVE. 

May heal, nor sun that follows any shower ; 
Nor, after tempest, the great golden calm. 

Nothing may heal save the unaided might 
Of him who scorns not labor; he who bears 
Scorn unto labor ever shall be slave; 
But he who finds no dark in labor's night 
He shall be king, and the bright crown he 

wears 
Will shine with stars above the sluggard's 

grave 



Herakles, brother of men and child of Jove, 
Greatened apace ; his beauty was a strength 
And his strength beauty; and the spirit of rest 
Loved to alight upon his shining brow. 
But chiefly on his lips and forehead shone 
Endeavor, and a wish to succor all. 
And his were hands to grasp and hold at need. 
When through Nemean woods the lion raged 
Shouted the people, " Bring us Herakles, 
He only may deliver the race of men." 

Prometheus from his place in Hades heard 
That cry, and like a last keen vulture shaft, 



HERAKLES. 81 

Keenest of all, his wounds it tore afresh; 
" Have I not also served this mortal race," 
He cried; " I, bearer of the torch, who gave 
Light and deliverance from the hate of Jove. 
Why am I thus forgot! AVhy do they cry, 
And Herakles their sole deliverer call! 
Why do they love me not, nor give me room, 
As highest good and therefore highest god; 
Why amid shadows must I ever stray. 
When I have loved and labored among men ! 
And now the fickle race, for whom, through 

years 
Uncounted, I more pangs than mortals have 
Endured within this frame of godlike mould, 
Cries out to Herakles, nor thinks again 
On him who raised and made them what they 



This, with an ear bent ever to the ills 
Of others, heard and answered Herakles : 

*' Prometheus, my brother! Thou who hast 
The temper and the nature of a god. 
Heed thou my counsel who have felt thy 
pain! 



82 UNDER THE OLIVE. 

*' First in the courts of heaven and fields of 

earth 
One king may reign, — one only ! Nor may 

gods, 
Doing great deeds, think that themselves are 

king; 
But, doing greatly, thus may learn how great 
The father Jove, who may transcend in all 
What all have done. He may delay to send 
Fire on earth, yet fire was his to send, 
And thou didst steal it. Thou didst waken 

earth 
From morning into day, from child to man. 
From dream to action, while the Lord of heaven 
Lingered to watch his children at their play. 
Then wert thou punished, and to me remained 
To help the children in their tasks and toils, 
The new-born labors of these later days. 
But, now again, the Lord demands of thee 
To render up the secret thou hast learned, 
Or else return to suffer; what thou hast heard 
By earth's new-kindled fires that should'st thou 

give 
Into Jove's keeping, lest insurgent man. 
Joined by thine aid with the insurgent gods, 



BERAXLES. 83 

Bring death to earth and anarchy to heaven. 
Lo ! while I speak the dreadful Caucasus 
Again awaits thy coming, and the dark bird 
Of death sharpens for thee afresh his beak. 
My brother, O my brother, thou must go! 
But I will follow thee and watch thy pangs, 
More dreaded than to bear them, till I hear 
Wrought, not by all these centuries of pain, 
But by the light of truth I bring to thee, 
And by the love I ever bear to thee. 
Until I hear thee whisper, ' It is done ; 
The will I cherish, lo ! is cherished first 
In the vast cradle of obedience, — 
Obedience to law, and to his name 
Who stands and holds the law within his hand.' 
Then with a mighty joy this might of strength 
To quicken, and, with a blow sharpened by all 
Thy pain, I smite the gorging vulture dead. 

" Behold! I hear the voice of Jove in heaven 1 
Perchance, if one could hear thee say, ' 'T is 

well, 
Obedience in a god is god-like. Lo! 
My sin and weakness sting me deeper now 
Than doth the vulture ; now at last I learn 



84 UNDER THE OLIVE. 

He shall be greatest who shall know one law 
Governs each moving star and the courts of 

Jove; 
And who would stay one planet in his flight, 
By the delaying of that car, is flung 
Into eternal dark and boundless space, 
Where nor his name nor fame lives evermore.* 
Perchance, O brother, if thy heart should now 
Thus whisper unto mine, the infinite Love 
Would give thee peace and bid thee come up 

higher. 
Lo ! now I hear the music of the courts ! 
Bend thou thine ear, and, listening, bow thy 

will." 

** Heaven is their home. 
But dark is the passing. 
And half-gods are many. 
Who climb to the sheep-fold, 
Nor follow my teaching. 

*' Sorrowful fate ! 
Prometheus the daring. 
Hiding his counsels. 
Scorning obedience, 
Anarchy 's nursling ! 



HERAKLES. 85 

" Bitter his fate ! 
I, Jove, the ruler, 
May not subdue him; 
Yet there remaineth 
Still my forgiveness. 

*' Conquered at last 
By love and by longing, 
By Herakles' striving, — 
His greatest of labors, — 
Thus the night endeth. 

*' Gods hold him fast I 
Gird ye his armor. 
Sharpen the arrow, 
Speed to its hiding 
In the heart of the vulture." 

** The music of the upper world is borne 

Like a vast light which points me out the way; 

Nor syllables nor voices do I hear; 

But as the flight of fiery orbs through space 

Makes music in the heavens, so do I see 

A Ught which is all melody, and hear 

A voice unfolding clear the higher path. 



86 UNDER THE OLIVE. 

" Twelve miglity labors have these hands per- 
formed 
Lest the night come and find no trace of good, 
No difficult way made easier to the feet, 
Because these days have been, and this hard life. 
But now past toils are all as nought to me, 
Who, climbing still new heights, must still 
aspire; 

father, give me power to save thy child ! 
What were all other joy compared to this! 
What were all other victories, and what 
All other labor, if the endless nights 

Be counted, and the darkened dreadful days 
Beside that sickening couch on the unveiled 
mount. 

1 go, I go, O guard and strengthen me; 
Behold all fear is past, all sense of pain, 
Save the divine unrest, the ceaseless flight 
Of spirit winging toward the eternal peace. ' ' 

VOICE FROM ON HIGH. 

Since on earth there is prayer and desire. 
And the love of a brother mounteth higher 
Than flames or than temples and towers, 
And fairer than fanes or than flowers; 



HERAKLES 87 

In the court of my temple immortal, 
And sheltered within the bright portal, 
Prometheus, the god-like, forgiven, 
Is seeking the service of heaven. 

And rescued afar in his dying, 
For new griefs of men and their sighing, 
Comes Herakles, he who delivers; 
The son of the gods, who are givers. 

On the right hand of majesty seated. 
Crowned with grace of his labors completed, 
As one who but now were beginning 
To succor earth's children from sinning; 



He stills their wild cries and their wailing, 
And leaves the bright trail of his story 
To lead their sad hearts unto glory. 



ARTEMIS. 



AETEMIS. 

VER dusky fields afar, 
^' Guided by tlie shepherd star, 
When the sun hath sunlc to rest, 
And birds are hurrying toward 
their nest, — 
See athwart the silvery night 
"Where Artemis pursues her flight. 




Goddess of the shining bow. 
Teach my willing feet to know 
Paths across thy woodland glen 
Where thou shun'st the face of men; 
Yet where thou calPst thy love to thee, 
However far his feet may be ! 
Night can wear no pall so dark 
To hide from him thy glistering mark ; 



92 UNDER THE OLIVE. 

Nor the cavern's deepest shade 
Ever shall make him afraid : 
His lowly, glad, persistent tread 
Follows where thy footsteps lead. 

Troops of maidens thee attend, 
Thou, their earliest, truest friend ! 
Beckoning them through dawn and dew 
Where the world is ever new. 
Encompassed is thy form by them, 
As the gold enspheres the gem. 
In the noontide's fiery glow 
Limbs they stretch of purest snow, 
Where the beechen branches cool 
Shadow some white-lilied pool. 
But if rude feet profane the way. 
Or curious eyes unloving stray, 
Darkly plotting that to find 
Which shall please the baser mind, 
Thou shalt bid his form to wear, 
Actaeon-like, the horns and hair. 

But for him who is thy love 
Untold joys are thine to prove ; 
Unto him thy maidens give 



ARTEMIS. 93 

Mountain-honey from tlie liive, 
And the sacred draught that falls 
Down from icy cavern walls; 
Thou dost lull his limbs to rest 
With music from thy mother's breast; 
Waters round thy dreadful steep 
Murmur ever through his sleep, 
That he may wake and smile to know 
Thine the harmonious ebb and flow. 

When the sun this darksome frame 
Touches first with spear of flame, 
Bidding beacon lights expire. 
And night to die on peaks of fire, 
Artemis calls her lover then 
From the dusty haunts of men. 
Swift from his couch he seeks her side, 
With kindling glance and joyous pride, 
But stoops to bathe him in the stream 
That gurgled in his vanished dream. 
Lo ! ere he rises she is gone 1 
All her trooping maidens flown ! 
Now he searcheth far and near, 
Up and down this grassy sphere; 
Hearing now her jocund horn 



94 UNDER THE OLIVE. 

And following, till at length forlorn, 
Fain would he rest his limbs and sink 
Drowsy on some mossy brink. 
There through the still noontide hour, 
Calming every restless power, 
Artemis herself shall brood, 
Unseen genius of the wood. 

Happy sleeper who can rest 
Thus on the great mother's breast ! 
While the ripening apple-bough 
Shadows thy earth-weary brow. 
And, ere Morpheus venture nigh, 
Can see above the tender sky. 
Through green tracery gazing down. 
Fairer than night with gem and crown. 
And what waking bliss is thine I 
Hid behind yon skirting pine, 
Thou canst seem to see her move, 
Mighty goddess of thy love ! 
Up and away ! New strength succeeds, 
She beckons thee to dewy meads, 
And where children love to dwell. 
Healed by her balsamic spell ; 
Or, perchance, to some dim nook 



ARTEMIS. 95 

By the feet of man forsook, 
Where the fount of song doth run, 
Undiscovered of the sun; 
There she bids thee drink, and learn 
Henceforward when the lilies burn, 
Or when first her paths are green. 
Or latest fruit in orchard seen, 
Thou, her worshipper, may'st bring 
Dearer songs than woodbirds sing. 

Still thou shalt not see her face. 
Tireless and brave howe'er thy chase; 
Strange the way her steps may lure, 
Yet many sorrows she will cure. 
If thou ever faithful seek 
Though the fainting sense grow weak. 

Canst thou not, O lover, twine 
Remembering garlands of the vine, 
And hang them on an altar where 
They who pant for heaven's air 
May see them, and may follow her. 
When thou art past, her worshipper! 
Weave the olive and the grape, 
And after mould their faultless shape 



96 UNDER TEE OLIVE. 

Worthy of her; then, for my sake, 

Weave fern and bayberry, and the brier take, 

That I may know she will not fail 

To find me in ray woodland pale. 

Lover, do this, and wintry storm 
Never shall despoil their form I 
Thought and memory shall shoot 
Issues from their living root. 
Thus these garlands of thy verso 
Other lovers may rehearse. 



ANTINOUS. 



ANTINOUS. 

TRETCHED on the happy fields 
that view the sea, 
Pillowed on beds of cyclamen, 
violet, rosemary, 
Or treading with cool feet the balmy herb, 
Freely I drink the morning and high noon, 
And couch above the kine at eventide. 




" The perfect blossom of the fig has fallen, 
The perfect rounding of the fruit succeeds! 
How lately have I seen a grain of corn 
Laid lightly in the bosom of the earth, and 

now 
The sheaf stands high as stands this pillared 

throat ! 
Above the gleam and clash of lusty spears, 
And swaying downward with the oak-tree 

branch, 



100 UNDER THE OLIVE. 

Like a white lyre of ivory played upon 
By heaven-sent airs, I float and rest and live. 
Far rather this than music of the feast 
Sung by the white-robed boys to carven lute ; 
Far rather, lying on the springing grass, 
To breathe and listen to the braided notes 
From gardens ripening now toward their de- 

- cay. 
My rounding limbs thus seem to grow and 

curve 
Into more perfect life ; these eyes to swim 
With languor born of music; and these silent 

lips 
To rest in joys beyond the realm of thought. 

" Here in these fields are heard the harmonies 
Born ere the listening ear of man was framed; 
And ever still the melody survives, 
Though the fields bloom and die, and none may 

know. 
For man who thinketh not on days to come, 
How shall he love to quit the busy mart, 
And all the works and ways of other men. 
And listen to the voices of the gods ! 
He cannot think this glory is for him, 



ANTIN0U8. 101 

Which rose before his morrow, and after his 

day 
Shall still endure when he is lost in night. 

" But I — 't is mine to hear the spheral notes 
Borne by the winds across the sleeping seas, 
The messengers of Love to me, his child ; 
They rest amid the trees, and fragrant thence 
Call to me with each little breeze at noon ; 
Or on the tempest ride with dreadful tones, 
Speaking the will of him who works our good. 
And ever, in each form, the leaf, the bud, 
The fruit, the flower, there sleeps the hidden 

voice. 
Which I would lie unmoved and listening hear 
Clothed thus with youth, watching the eager 

bee, 
Half drowned in his own bliss, while sleepy 

birds 
Are calling drowsily in the summer noon. 

" Yet do I feel 't were sweeter far to die 
And give this little life for one we love ! 
What joy with this great joy can be compared; 
Poor, to give infinite riches to our love! 



102 UNDER THE OLIVE. 

More sacred and more beautiful tlian all 
Wealth of the East or glories of the AVest, 
This life which is all the East and all tlie 

West. 
The jewel of my youth is mine to give; 
Behold I bend me to the yellow stream, 
And offer up this gift to my beloved." 

Thus in those far off ages of the world 
The waters parted and the deep received 
Into its untried bosom this young life; 
Nor yet the morning sun of Galilee 
On valley and mount greeted the waking eye. 
He nothing knew, save that his life was sweet 
And death was bitter, — save that one he loved 
The gods had said must part from this fair 

youth, 
His chosen joy, ere Hadrian's fame he won. 
What were love worth, if love could not lay 

down 
Fairest possession for the one beloved ! 
Therefore he clove the darksome wave and 

sank 
Never ao;ain to breathe this summer ai)-. 



ANTINOUS. 103 

Lo the swift river of time that ever sweeps 
Emperors and cities, moiiuiuents and kings, 
Loveliness, luxury, and all earthly joys 
Down to the black gulf of oblivion, — 
Has safely brought these beautiful white limbs, 
Fair crowned head, and tender dreaming eyes 
Back to our gaze, and the story of his fate. 
He could not know Love, the immortal child, 
Would put his arms about him and so keep 
Undimraed the lofty beauty of his youth! 
Vast cities, built to shrine his memory, 
Have vanished in the stream; only remains 
The undying vision of Antinous, 
Who knew the gift he gave was great indeed. 



ACHILLES. 



ACHILLES. 




O ! in the dawn of the morning the 
funeral j^yre, 
That all night long bore to the 
heaven of desire 
Prayers of Achilles, smiting with black- winged 

smoke 
Purple summits of Jove, loftier than towering 

oak, — 
Lo I when the morning broke into roses, wave 

upon wave, 
Only a smouldering ash lay white on Patroklos' 
grave. 

Then the hero Achilles, wearing pale sorrow's 

crown, 
Slept in the brightening dawn ; and there where 

he lay down, 



108 UNDER THE OLIVE. 

Covering his face, came in a dream the form 

of his friend 
Bending over him, as in the past he was wont 

to bend, 
But in his hand those tawny curls untouched 

of the flame, 
Signal of love and of death, signal of life and 

of fame. 

Sorrow, the mother and teacher, what can she 

do for earth's child! 
Lover of pleasure! thy morning was fair and 

thy sheaves were piled! 
Youth was dear, and dear was summer and 

pride of strength. 
High has he builded the altar, all have van- 
ished at length. 
Loved was he of the gods, yet his people were 

exiled in vain ; 
Wisdom was his, and he knew giving of life 

was death's gain. 
Why then should he yield the sweetness of 

days to walk with the shades! 
Fairer to wander in woodlands, where shadow 

with sunshine braids; 



ACHILLES. 109 

Better to join in the games, and rest in a white- 
walled tent, 

Than live in the dust of battles till youth be 
spent. 

Yet was there one who was dearer to him than 
the days, — 

One who suffered for those who suffer in dark- 
ened ways, — 

One who prayed to his friend, " Leave thy in- 
glorious rest ; 

Strive and conquer, strive and fail, to strive is 
the best." 

Achilles listened, then answered with laughter 
loud: 

" Go, I will watch thee conquer the slavish 
crowd ; 

All the spoils and all the glory gladly be thine, 

I will stay in my tent and pledge thee in wine." 

" What," he murmured, " is life but the rising 

and setting of suns ! 
Why should we struggle and fret when gayly 

the streamlet runs I 



110 UNDER TEE OLIVE. 

What is glory but noise and death, and a faded 

wreath ! 
Why for a shadow give to the shades this sweet 

young breath ! ' ' 

Glory ye could not decoy him, nor white- 
winged fame ! 

Hero of heroes, he fought neither for life nor 
for name; 

Only the face of his dear dead friend, of Pa- 
troklos his own, 

Out of the land of shadows forever beckoned 
him on. 

*' Watch, my beloved," the hero cried, " and 
listen for me ! 

Lean from thy darkened shore over the rest- 
less sea! 

Hear the trampling of horses, hear the victo- 
rious shout. 

See the white fires of Troy, and the dust and 
the rout! 

Music unto thine ear sweeter than pipe or than 
flute, 



ACHILLES. Ill 

When the towers crackle in flame and the peo- 
ple grow mute! 

Listen, beloved, again, and lean from thy 
shore ! 

Hear thou the chariot and horses drive o'er 
the darkened floor! 

Down to the kingdom they hasten, where thou 
art waiting alone, — 

Waiting these wreaths that I bear to tell thee 
thy labor is done." 



APHRODITE OF MELOS. 



APHRODITE OF MELOS. 

AR bad I wandered from this north- 
ern shore, 
Far from the bare heights and the 
wintry seas, 
Dreaming of these 
No more. 




Soft was the vale, 

And silver-pointed were the olive-trees; 
And pale, how pale ! 
Narcissus and the tall anemones; 
Where should I choose 
To lay me down and rest! 
Where to unloose 
The sandals from my feet I 
For all was sweet. 
But lo ! a dusky cave, 

Where no faint breeze bade even the aspen 
wave, 



116 UNDER THE OLIVE. 

Un visited of the sun, 

Unliaunted by earth's labor never done, 

Offered me her calm breast. 

There entering, I espied 

The flowery bed 

Where Pan had lain his head : 

'T was as if Ocean swept a snow-white billow 

Thitherward for his pillow ! 

So drifted, side by side, 

Lay the dim crocus and the lily bell. 

He, the god, had gone! 
Long ago dead and gone ! 
But near where he had lain, 
Above his head. 
There stood the marble form 
Of Aphrodite the victorious ; 
Safe from all storm, 
Safe from earth's pain, 
Supreme and glorious! 

Fearful I gazed, then whispered, " Sleep is 

fled! 
Why did she vanish not with the ancient world, 



APHRODITE OF MELOS. 117 

Where love and beauty lie witli garlands furled, 
Floating together down oblivion's tide ! 
How useless are they all, what joy or pride 
Lives now for us in antique god or fane! " 

Long, long I gazed upon that wondrous shape ; 

I could not sleep, she would not let me stay, 

But ever whispered to my soul, " Away, 

New heights for thee to climb ; 

Linger not thus to ape 

The longing and the honey-dropping tones 

Of that forgotten time ! 

*' I bid my lover flee 

Back to those shores where moments fill the 

hours. 
And hours the day ; by his bold sea, 
Never shall he forget 
When first we met. 
To fill the measure of my lofty pride. 
He shall stretch unknown powers ; 
And when he dreams that I would smile on 

him, 
Let him pursue his way, 
Farther and farther up the mountain side, 



118 UNDER THE OLIVE. 

Until with labor every sense grows dim; 
Then as from some strange dream he shall 

awake, 
To find the rolling sphere 
Beneath my feet ; 
The past and present here 
Mingled as one; 
And he shall slake 
His living endless thirst 
At fountains where no restless billows moan. 

" This latest; first, 

The dawning mist, and then the happy sun. 

Thou, O my lover, with longing shalt not greet, 

Nor think a sister unto me. 

That young sweet woman stepping from the 

bath. 
Nor she who holds a mirror to her face. 
Nor that fair creature feigning modesty. 

*' There is another path. 
Why didst thou find me in my hiding-place. 
And knowing nothing, fall and worship here, 
As great men worshipped in the vanished time, 
If thou wert not my chosen, set apart, 
Guiltless of fear ! 



APHRODITE OF ME LOS. 119 

" Fold, therefore, close -within thine heart 
The secret I shall give thee : know, thus far, 
All men have sought in vain my lineage and 

my birth; 
But, as on sunny afternoons there lie 
Upon the bosom of the heavens' blue sea, 
Mountains of cloud thoughts chmb, scaling the 

sky, 
Beautiful and impalpable, and remote from 

earth. 
Keen, unattainable, crowned with white fire; 
So shall it be with thee ! 
The footless fancy ever climbeth higher 
Than when the senses prey 
Upon her sweet companionship; 
Thou hast a vision from thy mountain top 
Built all of cloud, which shall not waste nor 

slip 
Into the waters of f orgetf ulness ; 
Such is thy bliss I 

Nor, till the unending flight of rivers stop 
Their journeys to the main. 
Shall my love cease to be thy midnight star." 

She is dumb, no longer a voice. 
Only a presence is she ! 



120 UNDER THE OLIVE. 

Beautiful presence ever remain, 
Lifting me, 

Holding me true to my clioice ! 
Standing unmoved, 

Glad with a joy supreme whicli cannot pale, 
Proud in the love supreme which struggles and 
will not fail ! 

Welcome the winter wind ! 

The barren shore and the bleak blowing sands I 

Ye who bid the spirit his armor bind, 

I follow ye ! 

Break and cast away these nerveless bands, 

Bid me strive till all striving cease, 

And I find my love ! 

She who waiteth the conquering one. 

Him whose labor is never done, 

Till sorrow no longer call, 

Nor on his ear the music of waters fall. 



THEOCRITUS, 



THEOCRITUS. 




Y ! Unto thee belong 

The pipe and song, 

Theocritus, — 

Loved by the satyr and the faun I 
To thee the olive and the vine, 
To thee the Mediterranean pine, 
And the soft lapping sea ! 
Thine, Bacchus, 
Thine, the blood-red revels, 
Thine, the bearded goat! 
Soft valleys unto thee, 
And Aphrodite's shrine, 
And maidens veiled in falling robes of lawn! 
But unto us, to us. 
The stalwart glories of the North; 
Ours is the sounding main. 
And ours the voices uttering forth 
By midnight round these cliffs a mighty strain ; 
A tale of viewless islands in the deep 



124 UNDER TEE OLIVE, 

Washed by the waves' white fire; 

Of mariners rocked asleep 

In the great cradle, far from Grecian ire 

Of Neptune and his train ; 

To us, to us, 

The dark-leaved shadow and the shining birch, 

The flight of gold through hollow woodlands 

driven, 
Soft dying of the year with many a sigh, 
These, all, to us are given! 
And eyes that eager evermore shall search 
The hidden seed, and searching find again 
Unfading blossoms of a fadeless spring; 
These, these, to us! 
The sacred youth and maid, 
Coy and half afraid; 
The sorrowful earthly pall, 
Winter and wintry rain. 
And Autumn's gathered grain, 
With whispering music in their fall; 
These unto us ! 
And unto thee, Theocritus, 
To thee. 

The immortal childhood of the world. 
The laughing waters of an inland sea, 
And beckonins: signal of a sail unfurled ! 



AT THE FORGE. 



AT THE FORGE. 




O! lull yourselves 

In sweet illusions of the summer 

fields, 
Ye children of Pandora; rock be- 
neath 
Old apple boughs and listen to the waves, 
The same that ^schylus and Alcaeus heard, 
And later brethren of the singing band ; 
Where they have gone, perchance your sum- 
mers go. 
And in the stainless blue of the past days 
JNlay dwell together in some leafy waste. 



I am Hephaistos, and forever here 
Stand at the forge and labor, while I dream 
Of those who labor not and are not lame. 
I hear the early and the late birds call, 



128 UNDER THE OLIVE. 

Hear winter whisper to the coming spring, 
And watch the feet of summer dancing light 
For joy across the bosom of the earth. 
Labor endures, but all of these must pass! 
And ye who love them best, nor are condemned 
To beat the anvil through the summer day. 
May learn the secret of their sudden flight; 
No mortal tongue may whisper where they hide, 
But to her love, half nestled in the grass, 
Earth has been known to whisper low yet clear 
Strange consolation for the wintry days. 
O listen then ye singers! learn and tell 
Those who must labor by the dusty way ! 



ELEGY TO DAPHNIS. 



ELEGY TO DAPHNIS. 




ON A BAS-RELIEF IN THE FLORENTINE MU- 
SEUM. 

HE shepherd fleeth not and hath no 
fear, 
He lifteth slowly up his languid gaze, 
The dancing phantom surely draw- 
eth near! 
But still his pleasant pipe the shepherd plays ; 
Death cannot choose, the pipe and he are one, 
The fields elysian will but mend the tone. 

Brief ceasing of the music may perchance 
Succeed, and Silence place the double flute 
Between his folded hands, and rest enhance 
The joy which holier melodies shall suit; 
Therefore the fleeting shepherd playeth on, 
Though death soon bid the merry sound be 
done. 



132 UNDER THE OLIVE. 

Unstirred the shepherd's heart, for are not 

fields 
Fresh-blooming ever dear to childlike eyes, 
Ere yet one thought of youth to manhood 

yields, 
Or earth's ambition veil those happier skies ! 
Our budding fields must fade and man decay ! 
Thou shalt waste not but in fresh meadows 

stray. 

O marble shepherd ! happy evermore 
Thus with thy pipe to keep remembrance true, 
To that far time and the far golden shore. 
When sleep or death, twin children, gently 

drew 
Thee to lie down in peace in their embrace, 
And thy companions piped if death might win 

the race. 

Morning with all her splendors hast thou seen, 
Wearing her jewel- stars and faded moon; 
Nor lovelier evening, nor a world more green 
Could ages show to thee than thou hast known ! 
Blest art thou, therefore, — who dost fluting go 
Where in new pastures fadeless blossoms blow. 



ELEGY TO DAPENIS. 133 

Thou lift'st thy languid eyes and follow'st him, 
The shadow, toward the kingdom of the 

Shades ; 
Nor stills thy melody although grows dim 
Earth's vision, and the leaf thou look'st on 

fades ; 
O happy youth, thou hast not lost thy pipe! 
Thy bud is fresh though fruits hang over-ripe. 

Life is all youth to thee, and Death the hand 
Leading thee gently into meadows, where 
The sun of summer always clothes the land, 
And tender leaves dance in the shining air; 
Companioned by young heroes listening mute, 
Thou stretchest thy fair limbs and ever tun'st 
thy flute. 

In the w^hite dawn behold a silver flame 
Leap and grow ruddy ere Aurora's ray 
Touches with color all the world's dark frame I 
Upon that fiery tip, far, far away, 
Is borne the dreaming shepherd : why should he 
Linger with age when Death would set him 
free! 



CLYTIA. 



CLYTIA. 

Gewaltsam schlittle Helios die Lockengluth : 
Doch Menschenfade zu erhellen sind sie nicht. 

Goethe's Pandora. 




HROUGH the blackness of night I 

can see, 
Through the thickness of darkness 

light comes, 
A gleam where no starlight can be, 
A glance where no meteor roams ; 
When the feet of the morning are dark, 
And the lamp of her eye is but dim, 
And the flower of the field a dead spark, 
The old glint of the wavelet a whim, — 
When a mist hides tiie earth from the sky, 
When a sound of bells tolling is heard, 
A warning to ships that are nigh, 
A silence of beast and of bird, — 
When the sad waves lament on the shore. 
Or hurry and rush to the sand, 



138 UNDER THE OLIVE. 

In wild waste, and tumult, and roar, 

A purposeless, riotous band, — 

Then over the night of my soul, 

And over tlie tolling of death, 

New fires of ecstasy roll 

With the coming of Love, which is breath; 

The green hollows whisper of birds, 

The silences break into song. 

And my spirit pours out into words, 

That to gladness and morning belong. 

But alas ! for the glory of Dawn, 

For his coming in fragrance and might, 

Red roses and billowy laAvn, 

With the full patient moon in bis sight! 

If in vain do we wait for Love's feet, 

And listen while the hours long delay, 

And know that the lilies are sweet, 

And the montb is the month of May! 

In vain would my spirit be glad, 

If Love hath forgotten his way ; 

Or if slow he linger and sad, 

In vain is the gladness of dav. 



THE RETURN OF PERSEPHONE. 



To 
THE MEMOKY OF MY MOTHER. 



PERSONS REPRESENTED. 



Zeus .... Father of Gods and men. 

A'iDONEUS . . . Brother of Zeus and rider of the Under 

World. 
Keleus . . Prince of Eleusis. 

Demopuoon . . Infant .fan of Keleus. 
Helios . . . God of the Sun. 
Demeteb . . . Mother of Persephone (her dress a blue 

robe, as of the earth in shadow). 
Persephone . . Daughter of Demeter. 
Metaneira . . Wife of Keleus. 
Hecate . . . Goddess of the Moon. 
Daughters op Keleus and Metaneira. 
Chords of Nymphs. 



THE RETURN OF PERSEPHONE. 

ACT I. 
Demeter enters, leading the child Persephone. 

PERSEPHONE. 



OTHER, may I leave you here awhile 
Sitting and listening to the talking 
drops 
Which fill this amber fountain, while 
I go 
To gather crocuses and flags for you 
Down in the meadow? 

DBMETER. 

Swift as go the hours! 
How like a nymph or dryad speeds she on ! 
Leaping across the path and fluttering down 
Over the meadow, as the Spring herself 



142 UNDER THE OLIVE. 

First flutters here and there, while close upon 
The delicate printing of her feet are found 
The new-born flowers and buds and fairest 

things. 
Even thus the field puts on her gayest robe, 
Woven in yellow, purple, and in white, 
And the grass bends to greet Persephone. 

sweet new days! wherein the young moon 

folds 
The old on her bright breast, to nourish her! 
Slowly the old shall vanish, silently, 
Lost in the new when bud shall come to leaf. 

PERSEPHONE {returning). 

See, mother, see! 

1 found a butterfly in the meadow there. 

And brought him back to you, best gift of 

all! 
Though here are flowers, crocuses, violets; 
But, ah! beyond my reach, down by the cool 
Dark stream where you have bid me not to 

stray, 
Grow tall, strange, purple blooms, though some 

are white. 
White as warm lilies, and the purple dark 



RETURN OF PERSEPHONE. 143 

As streams that flow to Bacchus! Might I go 
Once more, dear mother, thence, to gather 
them ? 

DEMETER. 

No, no, mj child! The hours now beckon us : 
But as thou goest phick blossoms from thy path 
And strew them in the places without bloom ; 
Thus men shall mark and bless thy passing feet. 
To-day the heart of the old earth is ghxd, 
Youth is so sweet to her, and the happy time 
AVhen Spring laughs out, nor knows of love nor 
death. 

They pass on and disappear beneath tJie arcJies which 
/orm the portal of their abode. Scene changes. The 
same seated within. Persephone, with embroidery. 

PERSEPHONE. 

Mother, thou teachest all things to thy child, 
All she would know and all this life can need ; 
I pray thee teach me now to blend these threads 
And weave the magic hues that make the sky ; 
Teach me to simulate blown grain, and more, 
Far more, to paint the light in human eyes, 
When joy transforms or pity bids them weep. 



144 UNDER THE OLIVE. 

DEMETER. 

My daughter, I give all the earth can give! 
This Avarp and woof of dusky circumstance, 
These lovely figures changing endlessly, 
Gilded by fancy, painted by a dream ; 
Further, the needle of thine industry, 
By use grown sharp, obedient to thy need. 
Thou lackest yet one thing, therefore I go 
To watch and to instruct my laborers, 
While thou here, sitting, in thine heart re- 
volve 
How joy and grief spring from one common 

root. 
Though bearing different blooms, and tenderest 

souls 
Go gathering the darkest, while they smile 
With a calm smile which lightens the great 
world. 

PERSEPHONE. 

Farewell, my bright-haired mother, far away 
Over the greening fields they wait for thee, 
The laborers ! And I, I know, must sit 
Alone and learn to weave the mingled web. 
And make a shining mantle for thy form, 



RETURN OF PERSEPHONE. 145 

To prove thy child doth love thee, and would 

strive 
To add a brightness to thy glorious shape. 

DEMKTER. 

Farewell ! Word heavy with a sea of tears ! 

\_Goes. 

PERSEPHONE. 

How the wind seems to breathe among these 

reeds 
Which the swift needle plants beside the wave ! 
And now the houses of the gods appear ! 
The living heaven gazing from many a star! 
And now the little globe whereon we sit 
Hangs with the rest and sways to Tethys' 

voice ! 

{Sings at her vwrh.) 

Zeus, thouJather of earth and heaven, 
Tliou who hast clothed the Pleiades seven 
In their robes of living light; 
Each a flame, a quenchless spark. 
Planted in a homeless dark, 
Shine and shadow to the sight; 
Light companioned by her shade; 
10 



146 UNDER THE OLIVE. 

Tell me, Zeus, how light is made. 
To sink and deepen yito dark. 

The sacred places of Dis are unveiled to her ; she gaze$ 
atfrst awestruck, then bursts into tears. 

I hear the m}a*iad waters flow, 

Myriad unwilling footsteps go 

Toward the realm where shadows dwell. 

Now, too soon, the way I know! 

Swiftly doth the needle pass 

Over the full-ripened grass. 

Through yon river's death-cold swell. 

ffer work drops unjinislied, nightpasses, dawn appears, 
a chorus of ocean nymphs approach who beckon to 
Persephone. 

Ye beckon me to leave my work undone ; 
Full is the tide, ye say, and summer ripe ; 
Ye say the dew lies white upon the field, 
And cools the thirsty violet which to-day 
Must wither ere the blood-red lily blooms. 
I will away with ye ere Helios snatch 
The diamonds from the meadow, or shall strive 
To pierce us with his arrows, all in vain; 
For we will shelter seek, if he pursue. 
In Hecate's moony cave, or by the rock 



RETURN OF PERSEPHONE. 147 

Where Neptune murmurs low in days of peace 
And in his anger rages up to heaven. 
Meanwhile the dewy eye of Phosphor dims; 
Let us go hence, for bitter night is passed. 

iThey go out, moving in unison as they sing, into thr, 

Jieids. 

Chorus of Nymphs. 

STROPHE. 

What is cool as ocean's bed? 
Who shall say? 

ANTISTROPHE. 

Violets ere dews be fled; 
Naught so cool as they. 

STROPHE. 

What is soft as ocean's wave? 
Who shall know? 

ANTISTROPHE. 

One her breast to Neptune gave, 
White as snow; 
He doth know ! 



148 UNDER THE OLIVE. 

STROPHE. 

Watery world wherein we live, 
Mortals call thy realm unstable ! 
What is stable canst thou give 
Earth, the home of magic fable ? 
Shadows under eyelids pla}', 
Under petals of a flower, 
Then they vanish all away, 
Youth and petal in an hour. 
Fading world of fading form, 
Naught is stable we can see, 
Gold and green and white and warm 
Though the days of June may be. 

PERSEPHONE. 

No more, no more to-day of mournful singing, 
Chaunt no replies upon these shining sands. 
But come and dance, for Zephyrus is bringing 
Fresh odors from the heart of Eastern lands. 
Come into meadows where the dews are sleep- 
ing 
Rocked tenderly upon each petal's breast, 
Forgetful of the watch the Hours are keep- 
ing, 
Forsretting: death, not life, is born of rest. 



RETURN OF PERSEPHONE. 149 

Come, sisters, come, where the strange flowers 

are blooming, 
Down yonder, down, beside the dark-leaved 

shore. 
Where all is silent, where no waves are boom- 

Where widening blossoms star the watery floor. 

They move together over the meadows ; at length Per- 
sephone allows herself to be outstripjyed, remem- 
bering her mother'' s wish. 

Fain would I too those godlike clusters bind. 
Were I one with these others, Neptune's own ; 
But he is jealous of my mother's love. 
And reaches up strong arms to drag me down. 
If I grow careless where the waves run low. 
She bade me stay behind, but here perchance 
I may espy some wandering flowers astray 
From that fair multitude, if Helios' eye 
Be not too keen to drive me from the field. 
How cool their voices sound, half lost, half 

blent, 
With murmur of the willows and the stream ! 
But ah! there yonder, there, I see them grow 
As if new-born for me, the wondrous flowers! 
They seem a hundred blossoms from one root, 



150 UNDER THE OLIVE. 

And earth and sky and the deep-bosomed 

nymphs, 
Daughters of Neptune, laugh in their sweet 

breath. 
Let me but hasten, that I too may glean, 
Ere they I'eturn, a harvest rich as theirs 
From the great love in my great mother's heart. 

(/S/<e runs leaping across the field.) 
I think the blossoms fly, and I pursue ; 
For still they seem but farther as I go; 
Ah! now I seize them! But I faint, I feel 
Thee, Father Helios, touch me with thy spear; 
Stay, T beseech thee, hold thy cruel hand! 
I am too young, my mother's only hope, 
Her happiness, the light of her sweet eyes, 
I have not disobeyed her ! Give me strength I 

Enter Aidoxeus. 

Come with me, lady, where the shadows cool 
Will lay their quiet hands upon thy brow. 
The chariot and the horses are mine own ; 
I will convey thee whither thou shalt sleep, 
Or waking sit and hear no sigh of grief, 
Nor foolish laughter; calmly move the shades. 
She hears me not ! Come, lily, bending down, 



RETURN OF PERSEPHONE. 151 

Seeking, unconscious, still thy mother-love, 
I bear thee to my chariot, and the steeds 
Now swiftly pass these meadows and the stream, 
Now the deep shadowed. valley and the cave; 
Descending ever to my darkened throne. 

PERSEPHONE (awaJcing). 

How dark ! Where am I ? Whence is this cool 

wind 
Which fans my brow and bids my sense return ! 
Why didst thou strive, O Helios, jealous grown, 
To bring my bright-haired mother to despair? 
But I am better ! Mother! mother dear ! 
I did not disobey thee ! Where art thou ? 

AIDONEUS. 

'T is T, my child, am with thee! Still thou art 
But half awakened ; I have brought thee safe. 
And charioted in gold with flying steeds, 
Far from the bright hot world, that thou mightst 

sleep 
In peace, nor know the trouble mortals know. 

PERSEPHONE. 

Where is my mother? 'T is no grief of mine 



152 UNDER THE OLIVE. 

Of which 1 speak! Bring thou me back to her! 
Wilt not? Then will I call to her, and she, — 
And she, though hidden in her inmost cave, 
Or swept by clashing sheaths of the grown corn, 
Would hear, and come, and answer. 

[*S'Ae calls and listens, then calls again. 

AIDONEUS. 

No voice returns to touch the ear of earth 
From these my kingdoms! We are past the 

bounds 
Where voices move the Spirit of the Air, 
Bidding him fly to seek the one they love. 
The bitter striving and pale agony, 
The disobedient heart that endless beats 
Forever on the boundaries I have placed, 
These may alone be heard, and to the light 
Of day and dreams of night bring awful shapes. 
A multitude of shadows approach ; Persephone and 
AiDONEUs disa2)p>ear among them. 

Hecate {turning slowly from her dark retreat toward 
the earth). 

I heard a mortal cry, a cry of pain ! 
I thought the voice was of Persephone ; 
Now will I give Demeter all my light, 



RETURN OF PERSEPHONE. 153 

And hang in peace above her restless soul. 

I may not smile upon the face of grief 

And bid it smile again! I only move 

Serene on my one errand, and behold 

The clouds succeed, — then, after clouds, the 

sun. 
We are but phantoms moving to the voice 
Of the Great Heart which still renews itself 
And blooms again in spite of winter's frost. 

[She mounts slowly up the east. 

HELIOS {.in the west). 

My ardent gaze was fixed upon her form. 
When lo ! she drooped; then Aidoneus, 
Too ready to possess so fair a flower, 
Gathered her up and drew her to himself. 
I will away unto the sleepy hills. 
We were alone^ the secret rests with me. 
To-morrow with the dawn will I return 
Unchanged, as if unknowing of the change 
Fallen Demeter ; all shall smile the same. 
Though now the mother must grow old alone, 
Nor greet her darling's face forevermore. 

[SinTcs and disappears. 




154 UNDER THE OLIVE. 



ACT II. 

DEMETER (seeking). 

HENCE came that cry! Echo, mine 
elf, was 't thou, 
Phiying thine idle pranks to lure 
some god 
Lost in the enchanted bosom of the wood? 
It comes again ! And now the peaked hills 
Repeat the sound, and now the ocean deeps; 
Too like, too like thy voice, Persephone! 
Darling, where art thou ? I can find thee not. 
A sharp pain seizes at my heart! Not here! 
How silent are these halls ! This narrow" room 
Wherein she sat ! The stillness speaks aloud ! 
The birds, grown wonted to the dusky vine 
Around her open casement, chatter there 
All day when naught is questioned of their 

speech. 
But now, alas! they stir not; all are hid; 
The very voices of the sea are hushed, 
And when I call her name Persephone I 
And yet again, Persephone! more loud, 



RETURN OF PERSEPHONE. 155 

Comes only deeper stillness. Why so mute, 
Yq birds, dear birds, who watched her tender 

feet ! 
Ye waving trees and blossoming shrubs that 

brushed 
The hem of her soft raiment ! Tell me now 
Whither she passed ! where I may find my 

love ! 
Behold the clouds are come to weep for her, 
Yet speak no word! Dumb, speechless are ye 

all! 
Yet see, where Iris speeds to Helios' throne 
To ask him of my child ; swift though her 

flight, 
Already is the god in darkness veiled. 
Journeying upon his storm-cloud down the 

west. 
My hope is dying ! Sad-faced Erebus 
Stalks past my window, enters at the door. 
And seems to say he shall abide with me. 
Day is not day when love and hope are dead I 
Let me look eastward, there where Eos once 
Was ever ready with her laughing face 
To follow Phosphor. 1 will wait for her — 
But no ! I cannot weep through these long 

hours ! 



156 UNDER THE OLIVE. 

Behold my sister Hecate from her cave 
Now looking wistful in my longing eyes ! 
I will ask her. O tell me, sister mine! 
In thy cool cavern hear'st thou aught of grief, 
Or voices crying from the deeps of earth ? 
For one is wandering motherless, and I 
Am left alone, bereaved of all mv home. 



Far in my cave withdrawn 
I heard an earthly cry, 
As if the leaves were strewn, 
As if the wells were dry ; 
As autumn days were come. 
And summer now must die ; 
Again I heard the moan, 
I heard the voice of one 
Who prayed her mother's love 
To hear her latest tone ; 
I said it is Persephone, 
Demeter's child! The only! 

In vain ! In vain ! Too swift 
The chariot rolled away •, 
I saw not him who drave, 



RETURN OF PERSEPHONE. 157 

Ko god those wlieels miglat stay ; 
Save Helios, who in heaven, 
Led on the dancing Hours, 
And stooped to kiss her once 
While she was gathering flowers ; 
Alas! I said, Persephone! 
The only! The only! 
[She passes slowly across the heavens while Deme- 
TER wanders aimlessly, absorbed in grief. 



O Hecate, turn not thy calm face away! 
Thou wert the last to hear my darling's voice! 
Enlighten me to seek at Helios' throne 
The path by which her young feet were mis- 
led ; 
Then if thou goest, go but to return ; 
For day is night now I am left alone. 
Yet without thee I stumble in my search. 

{The smiling face of Eos appears in the east.) 
Eos, dear Eos, know'st thou where is fled 
The flower of this fair world, Persephone? 



Wherefore should I know, mother, who but 
steal 



158 UNDER THE OLIVE. 

A kiss from her young lips wlien first I wake, 
Then flee before the feet of my great Lord ? 

Helios seated on a golden chariot, accompanied by 
the Hours, is seen climbing the horizon. 

DEMETER. 

O thou whose awful footsteps climb the sky, 
Thou who dost bid the heavens to move for 

thee, 
The seas to follow and the flowers to raise 
Their heads in prayer, I, too, bow unto thee, 
And kiss thy golden raiment, and implore. 

Father Helios, thou who seest all 

Thy children in their ways both good and ill. 
Thou who didst love me decked in happy hues, 

1 pray thee tell me where Persephone 
My child, my only darling, now is gone. 

And who hath done this wrong, and why the 
deed. 



Swift are the Hours, 

Nor hasting, 

Nor wasting! 

From the waters they rise ; 



RETURN OF PERSEPHONE. 159 

They bear in their eyes 
The hope of the future, 
The light of the skies. 

Strong is their flight ; 

The portal 

Immortal, 

Moved by their strain 

Of laughter or pain, 

Sways to admit them, 

Then closes again. 



Nor hearing. 

Nor fearing, 

I move in my sphere 

Remote and austere ; 

I, seated in glory. 

Bid the Hours to hear. 

Ask them, the sisters ! 
The unswerving. 
The serving ; 
Ask not the god-head, 
Of livino; or dead : 



160 UNDER THE OLIVE. 

I, seated in glory, 
Know not what is sped. 
[^He passes on, hidden in a veil of dazzling light 

DEMETER (despairing). 
Linger, ye Hours, O linger, tell me where — 

THE FLYING HOURS. 

On, ever on. 

Servants are we. 

We have no will of our own ; 

Fast or slow, — 

The fall of our feet. 

The end is ever the same ; 

AVhat the gods tell us we do, 

What the heart of the lover commands; 

Naught do we know of ourselves. 

We are empty of thought, of desire. 

Zeus knoweth more than all. 
He knoweth of death and of life ; 
Both when the child shall be born 
And the days at length be fulfilled; 
He knoweth the future ; 
The unknown he knoweth, 



RETURN OF PERSEPHONE. 161 

The dark and the light; 
When one shall vanish away, 
And whither the vanisher speeds. 

DEMETER {in anger). 

Dost thou know all, O Zeus ! Then where- 
fore keep 
From me, the sister of the gods, mine own! 
Why didst not tell me A'idoneus stole 
My child away, but leav'st me searching here 
As if thou wert ignorant of the underworld ! 
False, false to me, who sittest at thy board 
In all the assemblies ! I, whom thou hast loved, 
And now deceiv'st as one clay-born of men, 
Since thou dost know, I know ! Ever 't was 

thus, 
Whom I did love thou hatest ; and now thou 

hast given 
My one, my darling, to A'idoneus' arms ! 
Never again, ah! never will I sit 
Beside thy board nor pass the wreathed cup ! 
The buds shall wither and the streams shall 

dry! 
Green valleys become brown! The corn shall 
fail! 

11 



162 UNDER THE OLIVE. 

And sands now shut in Africa shall sweep 

Across the seas and mantle all our land ! 

The purple dark which shrouds the midnight 

sky 
Is not more dark than is this veil I draw 
To hide the ravages of grief and bid 
The voice of joy be silent. Thus I pass, 
And seek the stony hills and difficult ways 
Known to the gods, that haply seeking thus 
I yet may hear that voice which made the day 
All music, and whose absence makes earth 

dumb. 

[/S/ze draws her blue veil about her and wanders away 
while the land yradually becomes desert. 




RETURN OF PERSEPHONE. 163 

ACT III. 

THE WELL OF ELEUSIS. 

Demeter (in the figure of an aged woman, seated on 
the Stone of Sorrow). 

DEMETER. 

Y yellow hair is sprinkled white with 

snow ; 
Even as in autumn earlj drifts are 

piled 

Against the hedge, nor fade beneath the gaze 
Of Helios half estranged, but wait until 
The punctual clouds return to bring afresh 
A chilly mantle woven for all who sleep. 
Thus peace abides under the snow of age, 
And living spirit in the faded form ! 
Here may I sit upon this wayside stone 
Alone, or wandering in my loneliness, 
And see, upgazing with these mournful eyes. 
Visions withheld save from the eyes of grief. 

Four young maidens, daughters of Keleus, approach 
to draw water. They come running and leaping like 
fawns. They sing. 



164 UNDER THE OLIVE. 

Callidice, Cleisidice, Demo, Callithoe. 

callithoe. 

Pure well ! Deep well ! 

We draw tliy bubbles, 

Thy shining bubbles ! 

But quick they vanish, , 

Like the troubles 

Of our youth. 

O thou pure well ! 

Deep as love, 

Deep as desire ! 

Stay thou forever, 

And us deliver 

From thirst and fire. 

Thou strong clear spring ! 

Deep as love, 

Deep as truth ! 

Cleanse and feed, 

And cool at need, 

These fires of youth. 

{They perceive Demeter.) 

CALLiDiCE {to her sisters.) 
Often we see an aged woman pass 



RETURN OF PERSEPHONE. 165 

Across our path, and say, Alas ! she is old ; 
Pains have beset her and her nights are long ! 
But lo! she goeth to her children's home, 
To bring them fruits of dear experience, 
And guide the grandchild's feet lest they should 

stray. 
Here lonely sits with sorrow for her friend, 
Sad friend, sad sorrow, this poor aged crone. 
As if her life were death though days remain. 
Come, let us speak to her and give her cheer, 
And tell her of our mother's baby boy, 
Who lies now pale and drooping in her arms. 
Pray her to come and tell us how to give 
Our baby fresher color and strong life. 
She should be wise, if wisdom grow with years ! 
She should be kind, if sorrow match with love! 

DEMETER {regarding them). 

{To herself.) I had a daughter once as fair as 

they ! 
Her eyes were ardent like the maid who speaks, 
Her figure lithe like yonder one who stoops 
To gather flowers ; 't was even thus she stooped ; 
And like that other drooped her pensive head, — 
and her laugh, ah me ! 



166 UNDER THE OLIVE. 

How like tlie rippling laugh of her who finds 
And points her sister where the blossoms grow! 
For here beside the well where all must drink, 
A fringe of green still quickens the dead world. 

CALtiTDiCE {approaching). 

I pray thee wilt thou come with us where sits 
Our mother sad beside the household fire, 
Holding our baby brother on her knees? 
For he is ill, and thou who sittest here, 
Bent with the weight of wisdom and of time, 
May comfort us and bring him back to health. 

DEMETER. 

Why should I rise 1 Why should these aged 

feet 
Make haste to quit this sacred spot whereon 
My sorrow hand in hand with peace may sit, 
And undisturbed rehearse the happy past I 
Here, mindless of the present, I behold 
Strange secrets of the future, only known 
To those who dwell alone with speechless grief. 
Why but for ye, ye Prayers, daughters of Zeus, 
Honor to whom is honor unto him! 
Ye sit upon the lips of these fair maids, 



RETURN OF PERSEPHONE. 167 

Who each bears with her something of my child 

Persephone, that unity of all 

Most sweet, most fair, compassed within one 

form. 
And I must listen ; since if these are fair, 
Yet four times fairer was Persephone ! 
And when she prays to be brought back to me, 
He would offend indeed who would not hear. . 
Prayers should sit fourfold on her flower-like 

lips 
And wait upon the coming of her feet, 
Move as she moves, a goddess in her flight. 
She, ever radiant with the illusive veil 
Which seems to be, yet fades and is no more. 
The mortal veil of something which endures, — 
Who can resist beseeching on her lips ! 

CALLIDICE. 

Wilt thou come with us, nurse, and see the 
child ? 

DEMETER. 

I will, lead on ! Can others grieve as I? 
Stately they move, bearing their water-jars ; 
Each one with arm uplifted tall and straight ; 



168 UNDER THE OLIVE. 

Attendant maidens worthy of a queen. 
They should be mine if rest remained for me, 
Or hope, or hght, or joy, or aught to love. 
Ah me ! Beyond the well a poppy grew : 
Forgetful of my vow, I plucked the flower 
And bearing idly now have sown the seed. 
My broken vow, alas ! must bear its fruit. 
Behold the arch of Keleus and the hall ! 
And now the maidens put their burden down 
And beckon me to follow on their steps. 

{She wraps her blue robe closely around her form 
and enters. ) 

I hear the mother singing to her child ! 
Thus in the night I sung from topmost pine, 
Or in the bushes called the nightingale 
To give her his own lyric. Ah ! ah me ! 

METANEIEA (singing to Demophoon, who lies upon her 
Jcnees). 

Coo, coo, coo, chanteth the mother of doves ! 
Rocked in the arms of the trees the drowsy 

birds are asleep ; 
Rocked in the arms of thy mother, who ever a 

watch doth keep. 
Coo, coo, my baby, sweetest of all the loves I 
(The baby moves restlesshj and cries.) 



RETURN OF PERSEPHONE. 169 

CALLIDICE. 

Strive no more, mother, but lay down thy care, 
For lo ! beside the well an ancient dame 
We found, forlorn, like one bereaved of love. 
And we have brought her hither. She doth 

wear 
The front of wisdom and the form of age ; 
And on her heart she seems to rest the head 
Of ever-present grief ; thine, too, is hers; 
Give her the child ! He cannot suffer more 
Than now he suffers nested in your arms. 
Perchance she bears some spell to charm away 
The demon which forever draws the child 
Farther from us and bids him hate the sun. 

METANEIRA {tO DEMETEK). 

Nurse, take the child and sit thou here by me, 
Where I may watch his breathing and behold 
Each movement, though I no more bear the 

weight. 
Dejmeter talces the child and seeds herself in silence 

on a low stool by the hearth. She croons over it in a 

voice inaudible to Metaneira. 

Come, baby, come 

To my warm young breast 



170 UNDER TEE OLIVE. 

Under my robe, 
Here is thy home, 
Here is thy rest ; 
Come, baby, come ! 

Age may not touch thee ; 

Young, ever young, 

Is my heart : see 

How soft and how warm ! 

And the songs I have sung 

I will sing them again 

For thee, for thee ! 

Close, nestle close ! 

I cover my head 

With the veil of my grief ; 

But beneath, beneath, 

Sleep beauty and youth, 

And my pain is fled. 

Close, baby, close! 

I feel thy soft hands 

Nestle and steal 

Round the waves of my breast ; 

Come, baby, come ! 

Here is thy home. 

Here is thy rest. 



RETURN OF PERSEPHONE. 171 

METANEIRA. 

The child is quiet ! I will rise and seek 
The household duties which forever wait 
The housewife's hand. Why should he lie so 

still, 
While I who strove and wept o'er his unrest 
Could soothe him not ! Bring hither, maid, the 

wheel ! 

[)S/ie takes the distaff and spins. 

Enter Keleus. 

Who is this ancient crone who sits with thee 
And rocks our babe V 

METANEIRA. 

One whom our daughters found 
Beside the well, alone, and worn with grief, 
Whose length of days outrun the days of love, 
And still go on. Yet when she learned 
We drew our breath in anguish for our child. 
Her heart renewed itself, and swift she came, 
Armed with experience, to bring us aid. 



The baby is asleep : the night draws nigh ; 



172 UNDER TEE OLIVE. 

Go thou to rest ! Perchance when day returns 
He may requh*e thy care, the nurse being spent. 

[They go out. 

DEMETER {oloue toith the child). 

Breathe, breathe, and suck the milk of ray warm 

breast ! 
How should I feel again a mother's joy! 
Sad Aidoneus shalt not find thee, dear ! 
For I will nourish thee and hold thee safe, 
That others may not weep as I have done, 
And see the black days pass devoid of hope. 
Wax strong and grow and stretch thy rounded 

limbs ! 
Drink the warm milk of my late tenderness, 
Grown greater for the sorrows I have known. 
But hush ! Thou shalt not breathe the breath 

of sighs, 
IsTor languish on my heart's exhausted flame ; 
I will build fires afresh for thee, and blow 
The ashes of my love, and lay thee there 
To purify and strengthen for thy day. 

She rises, lays the brands together on the hearth, and 
places the child thereon. He rests there unhurt, grow- 
ing more ruddy, laughing and stretching out his hand 
to her, tchile she smiles down on him. 



RETURN OF PERSEPHONE. 173 

Work, cliarm ! Work, fire ! 'T is thus a man 
is made. 

She taJces up the child, who rests and sleeps on her 
shoulder, while she walks with him ; again she sits 
and looTcs at Demophoon, who seems to increase in 
size ; presently she rises and lays him once more on the 
flaming brands. 

Enter metaneira. 

My cbiild ! Ah, woe ! What horror ! Slave, 

begone ! 
Help! help ! My child ! In vain I snatch thee 

up 
And strive to dash away these floes of flame 
Wider and wider still they seem to spread — 

[She flings down the child and runs out, shrieking 

for help. 



Mortals know not the gods till they be fled ; 
Wrapped in the veil of silence, grief, or age. 
They follow unsuspected on man's path. 
My darling, my Demophoon, thou must live 
And serve me here, grown stronger for this 
hour, 



174 UNDER THE OLIVE. 

But I must forth ! Alone, ever alone, 
The great must voyage over stony heights, 
And step by step must cUmb Olympos, ere 
The voice of Zeus shall answer ! Sweet, fare- 
well ! 

Keleus flncZ Metaneira enter, ichile Demeter, about 
to vanish, rises in lier youtliful glory and scatters 
flowers and odors in benediction ujion the house. 

METANEIRA. 

Mother Demeter, now I know thy face, 
Alas, too late ! I pray thee hear my prayer ! 
I did not know my goddess in that garb, 
Far hidden under sorrow's dark-blue veil ; 
Her, ever-youthful, shrouded thus in age ! 
Hear me, O mother ! Stay — Demophoon — 
[Demeter vanishes. 



She is gone ! Fools are we : slow to see the 

good! 
Caught by the glamour of a passing joy, 
But dull to prize the jewel, till too late. 
Concealed within the stone ! O mother, hear! 
There by the well where first thy sacred feet 



RETURN OF PERSEPHONE. 175 

Paused iu Eleusis we will build thy shrine, 
A holy temple which may shelter thee 
And thy fond votaries till Zeus shall hear 
Thy prayer and give thee back Persephone. 
Meanwhile this child Demophoon shall abide 
Thy priest therein; there, from his loins grown 

strong 
With thine own strength, shall flourish through 

all time 
A race of priests which shall adore thy name, 
And keep thy temple for a holy place, 
Till mortal birth no longer mortal death 
Shall follow, from thy hands, forevermore. 



176 UNDER THE OLIVE. 



ACT IV. 




Demeter {alone just before dawn on the desert shore 
of a vast silent river.) 

T^^.ATUER HELIOS, through the thick 
of night, 
Above the silver river at my feet, 
I see thy rosy messengers return. 
Look thou with kindly eyes on me forlorn, 
A heart forsaken in a desert land, 
And wandering through a night which has no 

day. 
Look tenderly upon me once again. 
Though I am gray and wear these dark-blue 

weeds, 
And have forgotten all the tissues fine, 
Woven of roses, thou wast wont to love. 
But, if thou wilt recall Persephone, 
She will adorn her with the flowers of spring. 
Her thou wilt love ; then will old earth be gay, 
Then will the sea and sky rejoice with her. 
And gladness take possession ! Hear me now. 



RETURN OF PERSEPHONE. 177 

HELIOS (lending his rays slowly but caressingly upon 
her ; a blush suffuses the whole heaven and the deeps 
of the sea). 

Yield, O thou god of darkness, yield the maid! 

{A cry of joy is heard, continued and confused, like 
myriads of waking birds.) 

This gladness thrills throughout the upper world. 

Now Aidoneus bids his love return 

For a brief space to soothe her mother's heart. 

I hear Persephone answer him again, 

Up from her couch, swift-rising, with a song ; 

All nature listens, every bird replies. 

PEKSEPHONE {dimly heard fi'om afar). 

I would away, .since thou, my love, dost bid : 

Ceaseless I hear my mother's longing cry, 

Still do I see her in the dust forlorn ; 

I would bend over her and bid her live, 

Would sino; old son2;s until she too shall sing, 

Would laugh a girlish laugh till she shall smile 

The old sweet way, bidding the land rejoice. 

To her belongs a portion of the fruit. 

Pomegranate, which thy love hast given to me, 

And eating I have learned to know the seed 

Shall fall, the many many seeds shall fall 

In the dark earth, then grow again to light. 
12 



178 UNDER THE OLIVE. 

AIDONEUS. 

Speed thee, Persephone, and seek thine own ! 
Wipe her dull tears away, and bring the joy 
Of thy bright presence to the weeping world. 
I may not hence with thee, but thou to me, 
Dear, shalt return and find thy promised rest. 

PERSEPHONE. 

I hear the stamping horses, swift I go ! 
And peaceful will return when T shall hear 
The peaceful beating of my mother's breast. 
For she shall know what calm abides with thee. 
Here jealous Helios nor the hand of Zeus 
Can make us grieve : here, when the brovvn 

leaves fall 
And autumn freezes the green upper world, 
We do but smile and brood on the new birth 
Within the fallen seed ; here do we watch 
The life that ever lives, yet living, rests, 
Thus to renew itself and bring again. 
Not the old past, — ah no ! but tenderer yet 
The same old beauty with a heart renewed. 

Quickly I go, and amaryllis plant 

In the same places where last year it bloomed, 



RETURN OF PERSEPHONE. 179 

That the new heart may bound with the old 

love. 
Away ! away, ye steeds ! Away ! away ! 

SCENE CHANGES. 

Deleter enters in the perfect beauty of woinanhood, 
wearing full-blown roses ; s7«e /eac?s Persephone by 
the hand. 



Sit here, my child, and let me gaze on thee ! 
How softly dance these tendrils of the vine. 
These earliest shoots of many a promised joy, 
About thy brow ; and this ilhisive veil 
The summer of mine eyes would fain disperse. 
How gently does it shroud thy tender form. 
Ah! gladness of return ! What is all bliss, 
The whole wide sum the soul may gather in, 
Compared to this, thy coming ? What was 

death. 
Is life ; all being absent is now all 
Restored : so deep as grief could sound, so high 
Doth joy now climb ; once having been mine 

own, 
There is no life, no light, when thou art gone. 



180 UNDER TEE OLIVE. 

PERSEPHONE. 

Fond mother, say not so ! Thou found'st the 

child 
Demophobn, and fed'st thy hungry heart ; 
Or when that joy was snatched thou still didst 

feel 
A new, keen grace in making others glad. 
And this is left to thee, this forever stays, 
Though I must go and leave thee ; for no more 
Can thy warm breast, thy beauty, or the love 
Of thy great glory feeding every sense. 
Detain me from the world where shadows dwell ; 
For there is also love, and there is calm. 

DEMETER. 

Speak no more, darling, of the darkness past I 
Art thou not here ? Are youth and joy not 

here? 
Do not the birds sing and the buds leap out? 
Why shouldst thou dwell on sorrows that have 

been ! 

PERSEPHONE. 

Mother, the immortal shadows n tneir wander- 
ings 
Teach us what hath been evermore shall be. 



RETURN OF PERSEPHONE. 181 

The race of mortals quickly may forget, 
But in that shade the seeds put forth again 
Which thou, neglectful, hid'stin thy rich heart. 
Hence is it sorrow may no longer be 
A sorrow there; there do we find again 
What love has covered ; only such remains ; 
The seed that is not cherished shall not grow. 

DEMETER. 

Look not on me with thy compassionate eyes ! 
Thou, love, art here, and gladness is on 

all; 
The west wind waves at will my yellow hair ; 
The hoary chestnuts blow on yonder hill ; 
The flower-de-luce is blooming by the stream ; 
And thou and I may wander all the day. 
What more ! What more ! I ask the gods no 

more. 

PERSEPHONE. 

I, too, rejoice, my mother, thou being glad! 
Brief are the days I may remain with thee, 
But glorious in their passing ; nor is told 
What hour the steeds of Aidoneus come. 
But he is kind, and while the summer moons 



182 UNDER THE OLIVE. 

Greaten or fade, he stays liis solemn call 
And leaves us to our gladness. 



Art thou not mine ! 
Then wherefore dost thou bring these dark- 
some thoughts 
Into our sunshine ! 

PERSEPHONE. 

Am I not also his ! 
Let me not grieve thee, mother, this sweet day I 
Hold me once more upon thy blessed breast. 
As when I was a child and knew but thee. 
Perchance thou dost not know the world of 
shades ! 



I know thou wert stolen and art mine again ; 
That with thy coming summer days are ours. 
And endless beauty, born of light and love. 

PERSEPHO^'E. 

Endless ! Nay, mother, see yon roses droop 
Which were but now thy pride. 



RETURN OF PERSEPHONE. 183 

DEMETER {impatiently). 

Thou art not a rose I 

PERSEPHONE. 

In the vast kingdom of the shades, where live 
The spirits men call dead, we love these flow- 
ers 
With a deep passion, such as Sorrow plants 
In her black mould ; and from their faded stem 
Springs ever a fresh blossom like to that 
Pale Sorrow yields. 

DEMETER. 

I pray, look yonder, see I 
A yellow bee upon his purple throne ! 
Even now the thistle wear a gorgeous robe 
To greet thee coming. 

SCENE CHANGES. 

Autumn. A forsaken garden. Demeter and Per- 
sephone. 



The ground is strewn with ruins of the year ; 
One rose remains, late lingerer ! Boreas calls! 



184 UNDER THE OLIVE. 

I shudder at.tlie echoes of his voice! 

What would he here ? And now the last swan 

bends 
His southward course and flies to Africa. 
But hark ! Another sound the silence stirs ! 
The stamping of strange steeds! Ah me! ah 

me ! 
My child, my daughter, A'ldoneus comes ! 

PERSEPHONE. 

Dear mother ! long ago and from afar 
I heard the chosen chariot and the steeds, 
The impatient messengers of one who waits. 
I may not say, weep not ! for now thou know- 

est 
I shall return, nor leave thee comfortless ; 
Thou mayst awake and sing, thou of the dust 1 
For I shall ever come when buds shall spring. 
When the warm seed is quickened in the earth, 
When the vines dance and stretch their tendrils 

forth ! 
Nor yet the same, but evermore renewed, 
With the old love in a diviner form. 
I shall return, my mother — shall return I 

\_Goes, 



RETURN OF PERSEPHONE. 185 

Demeter stands gazing after the chariot which bears 
her away. 

DEMKTER. 

She will return, my darling will return I 
Forever changing, evermore the same ! 
O ye who dwell in dust, awake and sing I 
She will return, ray darling will return ! 



NOT BY WILL AND NOT BY 
STRIVING. 




NOT BY WILL, AND NOT IN STRIVING. 

OT by will and not in striving 
Came the voices to the singer, — 
Came the strange lamp of the dawn- 
ing » — 

Nor the tears that fell at sundown ; 

Not in framing tuneful measures, 

Nor because of light or darkness, 

Nor of silence nor of noises. 

Leaped the music that subdued him. 

Lost in some forgotten dream-land, 

Moving over fields unplanted. 

Waving golden sheaves of glory, 

Such as spring beside the fountains 

Of the lands beyond Kambala, — 

Thus his song would come unto him, 

Find the singer, who, obedient. 

Labored on the dusty highway, 

Waiting till the voice should call him 

To the lofty steeps of song-land. 

Where death is not nor to-morrow. 



TRANSLATIONS, 

FROM THE GERMAN" OF GOETHE. 



TRANSLATIONS. 




ANACREON'S GRAVE. 

ERE where the roses now bloom, 
where vines round the laurel are 
twining ; 
Here where the turtle-doves coo, 
where the blithe cricket is heard, — 
Who lieth here ! Whose grave is thus lovely 

with life and adornment ? 
Beautiful gift of the gods ! Here doth Anacreon 



Spring and summer and harvest brought joy to 

the glad-hearted poet ; 
Safe from the winter and snow under this 

hillock he lies. 



13 




194 UNDER THE OLIVE. 



MUSAGETES. 

FTEN in the winter midnight 

Called I on the gentle Muses: 
" Though there be no morning 
roses, 

And no light of day appear, 
Bring me when the hour cometh, 
Bring the lamp that softly shining, 
Failing Phoebus and Aurora, 
May arouse to quiet labor! " 
Yet they left me to my dreaming, 
Suffered me to sleep unquickened, 
Every sluggish morning followed 
By a day thus rendered useless. 

But as soon as spring-time opened. 
To the nightingales thus said I: 
'* Dearest nightingales, complain ye 
Early, early at my window, 
Wake me from the heavy slumber 
Holding, binding, youth so strongly! " 
But the singers, full of loving. 
Lingered all night round my window. 
Chanting sweetest melodies, — 



TRANSLATIONS. 195 

Held awake the soul within me, 
Stirred my new and tender longings 
In my freshly-quickened bosom. 
Thus I passed the night in listening, 
And Aurora found me sleeping, — 
Yes, the sunshine scarcely waked me. 

Now at last is come the summer. 
And the earliest glint of morning 
Brings the busy fly whose buzzing 
Rouses me from pleasant dreaming. 
Often as I half awaken, 
Brushing her away impatient, 
She returns and mercilessly 
Lures her unashamed sisters ; 
Driving from my very eyelids 
All my quiet pleasant slumber. 
Quickly spring I from my pillow. 
Seek for the beloved Muses, 
Find them underneath the beeches, 
Where they joyfully receive me ; 
And the troublous little insects 
Thank I, many a golden hour. 
Be ye then, ye small discomforts, 
Highly by the poet praised 
As true servants of Apollo. 



196 UNDER THE OLIVE, 



THE NIGHTINGALE. 

HE nightingale has gone away, 
She will follow back the spring ; 
She has learned nothing new, they 



But the old songs she will sing. 




PANDORA. 

A FESTIVAL PLAY. 



DRAMATIS PERSONiE. 



Prometheus i 
Epimetheus J 


. Sons of lapetus. 


Phileeos . . 


. Son of Prometheus. 


Elpoee \ 
iEpimeleia 1 • 


. Daughters of Epimetheus. 


Eos. 




Pandora . . . 


. Wife of Epimetheus 


Demons, 




Helios. 




Smiths. 




Shepherds. 




Field-laborers. 




A Warrior. 




Artificers. 




A Vintner 




A Fisherman. 





Excuse, the offspring of ArTERTHouGnT. 



The Scene arranged according to the grand style 
of Poussin. 

PROMETHEUS' SIDE. 

On the left of the beholder rock and mountain, on 
the huge banks and masses of which natural and arti- 
ficial caves are built up, near and over one another, 
connected by manifold paths and steps. A few of 
these caves are closed at the entrance b}^ pieces of rock, 
others have doors and bars, all rough and rude. Here 
and there something is seen built with regularity, es- 
pecially the underpinnings, aiming at an artistic ar- 
rangement of the masses, and signifying already more 
convenient dwellings, though devoid of symmetry. 
Climbing plants hang over, a few bushes appear here 
and there on the steeps; higher up they become thicker, 
and end at length in a vast wood which crowns the 
summit. 

EPIMETHEUS' SIDE. 

Opposite, on the right, a building of wood, severe 
in style, of the most ancient form of art and construc- 
tion, with pillars of the trunks of trees, the beams and 
sills rudely squared off. In the entrance hall a couch 
with skins and covers. Near the chief building, toward 



200 UNDER THE OLIVE. 

the background, similar small dwellings, with many 
arrangements of dry walls, planks, and fences which 
hedge about the different possessions; behind them the 
tops of fruit-trees may be seen, signs of well-kept gar- 
dens. Scattered around many buildings of the same 
kind. 

In the background, various fields, hills, bushes, and 
groves; a river, with cascades and windings, flows 
down into a bay, which in the foreground is surround- 
ed by steep rocks. 

The horizon line of the sea, broken by islands, com- 
pletes the whole. 



PANDORA. 
ACT I. 
NIGHT. 

EPIMETHEUS. 

[Stepping forioard from the middle of the landscape.) 

HILDHOOD and days of youth I call 
ye but too sweet ! 
When, after turbulence and hours 
of ceaseless joy, 
Swift-footed Sleep may grasp and hold ye 

strong embraced, 
While wiping out each line the mighty Now 

hath traced. 
The past and future mingle, clad in shapes of 

air. 
Such comfort now is far from me, from one 
grown old : 




202 UNDER TEE OLIVE. 

No longer day and night divide themselves for 

me, 
The ancient burden still I bear of mine own 

name ; 
For Epimetheus was that my parents chose, 
The past recalling thus, the deeds of rashness 

done. 
Returning thus, in difficult play of the thought. 
To haunted realms where dwell the ghosts of 

what might be. 
So bitter was the task that weighed upon my 

youth. 
Impatient I plunged on, seizing what life could 

give, 
And thoughtless caught what came, grasping 

the present gift, 
And found new cares therein with a new weight 

of pain. 
Thus fleddest thou away, thou mighty time of 

youth, 
Forever changing, yet consoling in thy change, 
From fullness unto need, from gladness unto 

grief. 
Despair before the wondrous forms of fancy 

fled; 



PANDORA. 203 

I slept a dreamless sleep after both sun and 
storm. 

Now do I wander in the night wakeful, and 
glide around, 

And weep the fleeting bliss granted to mine 
who sleep; 

1 fear for them the crowing cock and morning- 
star 

Too swift in shining. Better were it always 
night ! 

Though Helios mightily shake his glowing 
locks 

He cannot fill with light the pathways of man- 
kind. 

But what is this I hear? My brother's creak- 
ing door 

Thus early open ! Wakes he so soon the doer ? 

Impatient for his task does he already light 

Again the hollow hearth with work-inciting 
flame, 

And call the sooty crowd to share that happi- 
ness 

The powerful must feel who beat and mould 
the brass ? 



204 UNDER THE OLIVE, 

Not so ! A light swift footstep turning hither 

comes, 
In joyous measure timed to heart-uplifting 

song. 

PHILEROS. 

{Approaching from the side of Prometheus.) 
To the air! To the fresh blowing air, let me 

go! 
The four walls oppress me ! The house is my 

foe! 
For how can the skins of my couch give me 

pleasure ? 
Or rock me, a fire, to dream on earth's treas- 
ure? 
Neither silence nor rest 
Has the lover unblest. 
What helps it though lowly his head may be 

lying, 
And tired, his limbs are stretched out like one 

dying ; 
His heart is awake, it is eager and bright, 
It lives a Hve day in the dark of the night. 

The planets look down with their tremulous 
glow. 



PANDORA, 205 

And rejoice in the joy of a love that they know. 

To seek for and follow the blossoming way 

Where lately she sang and her feet loved to 
stray ; 

Where she stood, where she sat, where the blue- 
arching weather 

Of the vast fragrant heaven enshrined us to- 
gether ; 

And around us and toward us the flowers of 
the earth 

Came nodding, possessed with the joy of new 
birth. 

There yonder, O balm ! 

Is the silence, the calm ! 

EPIMETHEUS. 

What mighty hymn comes sounding tlirough the 
night to me ! 

PHILEROS. 

Whom do I meet so soon, who wakens thus so 
early ? 

EPIMETHEUS. 

Say, Phileros, is 't thou? I seem to hear thy 
voice. 



206 UNDER THE OLIVE. 

PHILEROS. 

Uncle, 'tis I! But stay me not, I pray of 
thee. 

EPIMETHEUS. 

But whither dost thou go? Thou early rising 
youth. 

PHILEROS. 

Upon a path it suiteth not for age to tread. 

EPIMETHEUS. 

To guess the ways of youth is never difficult. 

PHILEROS. 

Then let me but proceed, and ask me nothing 
more. 

EPIMETHEUS. 

Confide in me! The lover sometimes counsel 
needs. 

PHILEROS. 

He stays no counsel, nor finds room for con- 
fidence. 

EPIMETHEUS. 

Yet tell nie but the name of her who is thy 

joy. 



PANDORA. 207 

PHILEROS. 

Her name and parentage are both concealed 
from me. 

EPIMETHEUS. 

Even this will bring thee woe, to injure one 
unknown. 

PHILEROS. 

My happy pathway darken not, O thou good 
man. 

EPIMETHEUS. 

I fear me much thy feet are hastening to grief. 

PHILEROS. 

Phileros, go on to the blossoming garden! 
Where fullness of love shall be thy rich guer- 
don; 
If Eos, the shy one, with color divine, 
Makes the curtain to blush that veils the pure 

shrine, 
Behind her own curtain my darling now waits 
With yet ruddier color, — toward Helios' gates 
Stands gazing for me over garden and field. 
And longing for what the future may yield. 
Thou y earnest for me. 
As I strive after thee. 



208 UNDER THE OLIVE. 

EPIMETHEUS. {TuTTis to the right of the beholder.) 
O liappy one, go on! Thou blest one, thither 

go! 
If only this brief journey were a joy to thee 
Thou wert a source of envy. Shall the hour of 

bliss 
Not also strike for thee? Though swiftly it 

must pass. 
So was it once with me, so joyful leaped my 

heart, 
When first Pandora hither from Olympus came! 
Beautiful and all gifted, loftily she moved, 
Sublime to those who gazed, asking with her 

sweet face 
If I should turn her off as my stern brother 

did. 
Already was my bosom deeply stirred by her ; 
My lovely bride I took with senses all enslaved. 
Her dowry, also, mystery-laden, I took home 
In earthen vase enclosed, of stateliest design. 
It stood unopened there. The fair one kindly 

brought 
It me, and broke the heaven-made seal, and 

raised the lid, 
When lo! a little smoke close shut therein arose. 



PANDORA. 209 

As incense should arise to bear the Muse's 

praise, 
And gayly shone one starry gleam from out the 

mist, 
And then another : quickly others followed 

these. 
Then I looked up and saw, there floating on 

the cloud. 
Delightful phantasms, godlike figures, crowding 

thick. 
Pandora showed them me, and named the float- 
ing forms. 
" Yonder," she said, " thou seest where happy 

Love shines high ! " 
I cried, " There floats it ! How I Have we it 

not with us ! " 
*' And yonder, Luxury," again she said, '* I see. 
Whose wind-swept garment floats wave-like 

after her feet. 
Still loftier there stands, with earnest lordly 

look, 
A powerful figure pressing forever onward. 
And opposite, one friendly, seeking favor, sweet, 
Compelling, full of eagerness, and pleased with 

self, 

14 



210 UNDER THE OLIVE. 

A pretty face, endeavoring to catch tliine eye. 

Still others, mingling melt, and each in each 
dissolve ; 

As waves the smoke, they wave, obedient to 
the air, 

Yet each desires to bring a pleasure for thy 
days." 
Then cried I : " All in vain the starry host 
may shine; 

In vain deceits mist-painted, worthy of de- 
sire ! 

Pandora, thou, the only, wilt deceive me not! 

I ask no other joy, whether of real life. 

Or fancy-painted; only stay thou ever mine! " 
Meanwhile the new-formed choir of men drew 
near to us. 

The neophytes now first gathered for our fete; 

They gazed in joy upon the shining forms of 
air, 

And snatched and strove to seize; but these 
again more swift 

In motion, could not yield to earthly out- 
stretched hands. 

But floating, sometimes up, and sometimes 
downward sunk. 



PANDORA. 211 

Continually deceived the crowd that followed 
them. 

While I with trustfulness and speed approached 
my wife, 

And made mine own that form of bliss the gods 
had sent, 

Drawn close by these strong arms to my o'er- 
flowing breast. 

The blessedness of love in that one moment felt. 

Immortal made the lovely fable of this life. 

{He goes to the couch in the hall and places himself 
upon it.) 
Yonder wreath by godlike fingers 
Pressed upon Pandora's ringlets, 
As her forehead it o'ershadowed, 
Lustre of her eyes subduing. 
Floats before my soul and senses, 
Floats as she herself, long- vanished, 
Starry vision, over me. 

Ko more holds the wreath together ; 
Torn and scattered and dispelled, 
Over all the greening meadows 
Richly are its gifts dispersed. 
{Drowsily.) 



212 UNDER THE OLIVE. 

O how gladly would I bind thee 

Once again, thou lovely garland I 

In a garland, in a posy, 

Bind thy gifts, O Flora- Cypris! 

Now no longer wreath or posy 

Stay for me ; they fall apart. 

Singly dropping flower by flower. 

Through the green of field and meadow; 

Plucking go I, and go losing 

All the plucked , how quickly vanished I 

Roses, do I glean your beauty, 

Whither, lilies, are ye gone ! 

[-STe sleeps. 

PROMETHEUS. 

{A torch in his hand. ) 

Thou flaming torch more early than the morn- 
ing-star, 

Aloft the father's hand, a herald, hath thee 
swung 

Of day before the day! God-like we honor 
thee ! 

For every industry most worthy of a man 

Is born of morning's prime; thus only day af- 
fords 



PANDORA. 213 

Content and growth and full delight of tired 
hours. 

The evening ashes' holy treasure therefore now 

Do I unveil and waken to a fresher glow, 

Illuminating thus my strong work-loving men. 

Thus, brass-subduers, do I call on ye aloud. 

Your right arms lightly lift, swaying and keep- 
ing time 

In one vast hammer-chorus, ringing loud and 
swift, 

And from the molten store abundance take for 



{Many caves open, many fires begin to hum.) 



Now kindle the fire 1 
No power is higher. 
He braved the gods' ire 
Who snatched it and fled. 
He who first kindled it. 
He was allied to it, 
Rounded and formed with it 
Crowns for the head. 



214 UNDER THE OLIVE. 

Water that only flows, 

Guided as Nature knows, 

From the rocks through the meadows ; 

Wherever it goes, 

Follow cattle and men. 

Fishes are swarming there, 

Birds are reflected there, 

Theirs is the flood; 

Water unstable, 

Now sunny, now sable. 

If one who knoweth her 

Sometimes controlleth her, 

That find we good. 

Thou, earth, who standest fast, 

Though into torture cast, 

Men hack thee and pain thee! 

For gain do they rend thee I 

And for their pride. 

Slaves to their sweaty doom, 

All scarred and seamed they roam. 

Bending thy fair sweet home : 

And where no flowerets bloom 

Thee do they chide. 



PANDORA. 215 

Stream ye, O air and light, 
Far from my eager sight I 
Keep ye no fire bright, 
Worth ye have none. 
When round the hearth ye play, 
We bid ye welcome stay; 
Your place is won. 
Being in ye may not out, 
Dance ye the flames about, 
Till all is done. 

Quick to the labor fly ! 
Now flames the fire high, 
Now beats against the sky; 
Calm stands the father by 
Who snatched it and fled. 
He who first kindled it, 
He was allied to it, 
Rounded and formed with it, 
Crowns for the head. 

PROMETHEUS. 

The active man finds comfort in his favorite 

view! 
And thus it pleases me to hear the praise of 

fire 



216 UNDER TEE OLIVE. 

Before all elements, ignoring otliers' worth. 
Ye who now look within, and see the anvil 

work. 
And mould the hard brass, even as the mind 

suggests, 
Thus do I rescue ye from mine own ruined 

race, — 
From those who reach for shapes of mist with 

drunken eyes 
And open arms, striving to grasp and to attain 
What may not be attained; or, what if it were 

reached 
Were neither use nor joy; but ye are useful 

ones. 
Unyielding mountains may not stand against 

your power, 
The brazen hills must fall beneath your levers' 

might, 
And molten, quickly fly into a tool transformed, 
A double hand; a hundred fold increasing 

strength. 
The swinging hammers weld, the dextrous 

tongs hold fast; 
Thus single force and powers combined shall 

still advance 



PANDORA. 217 

By aid of industry and wisdom, without end. 

What might can work and subtlety suggest 
maybe 

Brought onward farther to perfection by your 
skill; 

Alert and conscious, therefore, keep to daily 
work. 

The crowds of your posterity even now ap- 
proach. 

Desiring the complete and worshipping the 
rare. 

SHEPHERDS. 

Climb up the mountain height, 
Follow the streamlet bright, 
Where the rough steep doth bloom, 
"Where the spring flowers find room, 
There drive your flock. 

Everywhere let them browse 
Clover or dewy boughs, 
Wandering after sweetest food. 
Tripping, dumb and joyous brood, 
Where it pleaseth them. 



218 UNDER THE OLIVE. 

FIRST SHEPHERD {to the Smiths). 
O, mighty brothers, see 
We need your aid! 
We ask a knife of ye, 
Sharpest is made! 
Syrinx must sorrow ! 
Reeds we must borrow! 
Give us the best there is! 
Good make the steel! 
Our joy and praise for this 
Your heart shall feel. 

SECOND SHEPHERD (to the Smith). 

Thou hast for weaklings 
Tenderly cared. 
Hast done even more than that 
With them hast shared. 
Give us thy brazen craft. 
Steel broad and keen, 
Turning our shepherd's crook 
Into a foeman's shaft. 

Then we may meet the wolf, 
Or man, unfriendly; 
For even the friendly 



PANDORA. 219 

Like not to have 

Their rights interfered with: 

Both feeble and brave 

Contests must see; 

He who no soldier is, 

He shall no shepherd be. 

THIRD SHEPHERD {to the Smith). 

Who would a shepherd be 
Long hours are his, 
Many stars he may see. 
The leaf his whistle is. 
The tree may give us leaves, 
The moor may give us reeds, 
But come, thou artist smith, 
Thou canst serve our needs ! 
Give us the iron reeds, 
Pointed for the lips. 
Slender as leafy tips! 
Louder than singing words 
Rings it afar; 
Maidens who listening are 
Hear the sweet chords. 

[The shepherds divide, with music and song, in the 

landscape. 



220 UNDER TEE OLIVE. 

PROMETHEUS. 

Though ye may wander peaceful, peace ye may 
not find; 

One fate were then decreed, alike for man and 
beast; 

A better lot I pictured for the race of men, 

That one against the other, singly or combined, 

Should stand opposed, and, hating each, should 
each compel 

To manifest himself the one superior. 

Take courage, therefore. Children of one fa- 
ther ye ! 

Who stands, or falls, can be to him but little 
care. 

A race remains to him, increasing still in power, 

Which ever plots and plans to spread itself 
abroad ; 

Too crowded is the growth, and far too thickly 
pressed. 

Now do they draw apart and master all the 
world. 

How blessed is the moment of the wild fare- 
well! 

Ye smiths and friends! Now only arms 
make ye for me; 



PANDORA. 221 

To-day let go tlie wants that thoughtful plough- 
men feel, 

Or what from ye the fisher-people may de- 
mand. 

Make only weapons! Then ye have accom- 
plished all, 

And for your hardiest sons full satisfaction 
heaped. 

But first, to ye who painful strive through hours 
of dark, 

A festival of rest ! For he who nightly 
works 

He shall enjoy when others early go to toil. 
{Approaches the sleeping Epimetheus.) 

But thou, my sole twin-brother, dost thou rest 
thee here ? 

Night wanderer weighed down by care and 
bitter thought ! 

I pity thee, and yet I praise thy destiny. 

Endurance is our lot 1 laboringr or sufferino;. 



He who first kindled it, 
He was allied to it, 



222 UNDER THE OLIVE. 

Rounded and formed witli it 
Crowns for the head. 
[They disappear in the caves,iohich close behind them 

EPLMETHEUS. 

(Sleeping in the open hall.) 

ELPORE. 

[The vionii7iff-star upon her head, in airy raiment, 
rises behind the hill.) 

EPIMETHEUS (dreaming). 

I see the constellations coming thick! 
One star shines brightly out above the rest! 
What rises there so swift beliind the star? 
What lovely crowned head doth it illume? 
Not all unknown I see her moving on, 
The slender, delicate, and gracious form. 
Is 't thou, Elpore? 

ELPORE (from afar). 

Dear father, yes. 
To cool thy brow I hither breathe to thee. 

EPIMETHEUS. 

Step this way, come. 



PANDORA. 223 

ELPOKE. 

.'T is not allowed to me. 



EPIMETHEUS. 

A little nearer ! 

EiJ^OKE (apjjroaching). 
So then ? 



EPIMETHEUS. 

Yes ! still nearer. 
ELPORE {very close). 

EPIMETHEUS. 

No lono;er do I know thee 1 



Thus? 



ELPOEE. 

So I thought {flraioing away) ! But now? 

EPIMETHEUS. 

Yes! 'T is thou, beloved maiden, 
Whom thy departing mother tore from me. 
Where dost thou stay? Gome here to thy old 
fatlier. 



224 UNDER THE OLIVE. 

ELPOKB (stepjnng nearer). 
I come, my father, yet it serves for nought. 

EPIMETHEUS. 

What lovely child is this so near to me? 

ELPORE. 

She whom thou know'st and know'st not is thy 
daughter. 

EPIMETHEUS. 

Then come into my arms 1 

KUPORB. 

You cannot hold me. 

EPIMETHEUS. 

Then kiss me. 

ELPOEE {at his head). 

I kiss thy brow 
With gentle lips (departing'). Now am I gone. 

EPIMETHEUS. 

Whither 1 Whither! 



PANDORA. 225 

ELPORE. 

I go to look for lovers. 

EPIMETHEUS. 

Wherefore to seek them ? They can need thee 
not. 

ELPOEE. 

Ah yes! They need me, no one needs me more. 

EPIMETHEUS. 

Then promise me ! 

ELPORE. 

What shall I promise ? What ? 

EPIMETHEUS. 

The joy of love, — returning of Pandora. 

ELPORE. 

The impossible it suits me well to promise. 

EPIMETHEUS. 

And will she come again ? . 

ELPORE. 

Yes! Truly, yes! 
15 



226 UNDER THE OLIVE. 

{To the beholders.) 
Ye \good people r Sucli a gentle, 
Sympathetic heart the gods have 
Placed within my youthful bosom, 
What ye will and what ye long for 
Never can I quite deny ye, 
And from me, good-hearted maiden, 
Ye shall only hear a " Yes." 

Ah ! Behold the other demons 
Disobliging and unkindly, 
Shrieking ever, interrupting. 
Malice-born, a bitter " No." 

Yet the morning breezes' sighing 
Do I hear, and the cock crowing ! 
I, the child of morn, must hasten, — 
Hasten to the waking ones. 

Yet how can I thus forsake ye! 
Do ye wait for something tender? 
For a sweet assenting word ? 

Hear the storming ! Hear the raging ! 
Are the waves of morning roaring? 



PANDORA. 227 

Do the feet of Helios' horses 
Stamp behind the golden portals ? 

No! The murmuring waves of being, 
Rushing of ungoverned wishes, 
From the depth of hearts o'erfreighted, — 
These come surging up to me. 

Ah ! What will ye from the maiden ? 
Ye, unresting, ye, the striving! 
Riches will ye, power and honor, 
Gold and grandeur? These, the maiden, 
Gifts like these she cannot give ye, — 
All her gifts and all her accents, 
Every one is maidenly. 

Would ye power? The powerful have it. 
Would ye riches ? Grasp and hold them ! 
Splendor? Deck ye ! Intiuence? Cringe, then! 
Hope ye not to have such bounties : 
Who desires them, let him seize them I 

All is still ! Yet hear I clearly. 
While I bend mine ear, a sighing. 
Whispering, — yes, a lisping, sighing, — 
O it is the voice of Love I 



228 UNDER THE OLIVE. 

Turn thyself to me, beloved ! 
See in me the sweet, the true one, 
Of thine own beloved the vision 1 

Speak as thou to her hadst spoken 
If she stood before thee smiling, 
And those lips which have been silent 
Might and would confess to thee. 

' ' Will she love, then ? " Ah, yes ! " Me ? " 

Yes I 
" Will be mine? " Yes. " Constant? say ! " 

Yes! 
" Shall we come once more together? " 
Ah, yes ! " Bind our troth together? " 
*' Not to part? " Yes, truly yes ! 
{Bhe veils herself and fades away while she repeats) 

Truly, yes I 

BPIMETHKUS. 

How sweet, O lovely dream-world ! But thou 
fad'st away ! 

{The piercing shriehs of a woman come from the gar- 
den.) 



PANDORA. 229 

EPiMETHEUS {springing up). 
How fearful falls the voice of pain when one 
first wakes. 

{Repeated shrieks.) 
A woman shrieking ! flying ! nearer ! nearer 
still ! 

EPiMELEiA {inside the garden, close by the hedge). 
Ai I Ai I Woe, woe to me ! Woe ! Ai ! Ai 1 
Woe to me ! 

KPIMETHEUS. 

Epimeleia's voice: she is close behind the hedge. 

EPIMELEIA {hastily leaping over). 
Woe! Murder and death! Ai! Woe to the 
murderer ! 

PHILEKOS {springing after). 
In vain ! Already do I seize thy braided hair. 

EPIMELEIA. 

Upon my neck, alas! the murderer's breath I 
feel. 



230 UNDER THE OLIVE. 

PHILEROS. 

Feel rather at thy neck, traitress, the axe's 

edge ! 

EPIMETIIEUS. 

Off ! Daughter, thee I free, if guilty or guilt- 
less. 

EPiMELEiA (sinking down at the left side). 

father ! Like a god a father is to us ! 

EPIMETHEUS. 

Who so audacious from this precinct drives 
thee? 

PHILEROS {at the right of Epimetheus). 

Protect ye not a shameless woman's cursed 
head. 

EPIMETHEUS {protecting her with his mantle). 

1 save her, murderer, from thee and every 



PHILEROS {going round to the left of Epimetheus). 

But I will strike her even under thy mantle's 
ni^ht. 



PANDORA. 231 

fiPiMELEiA {turning and throiving herself on the right 
of her father). 

O father ! I am lost ! Save me from vio- 
lence ! 

PHILEROS {behind Epimetheus, turning to the right). 

The knife may miss, perchance, yet missing it 
shall strike. 

{He wounds Epimeleia in the nech.) 

EPIMELEIA. 

Al! Ai! Woe is me! 

EPIMETHEUS {averting the blows). 

Woe to us ! Violence ! 

PHILEROS. 

But scratched ! soon wider doors I '11 open for 
thy soul! 

EPIMELEIA. 

O misery! misery! 

EPIMETHEUS {defending her). 

Help ! Woe to us I Woe 1 



232 UNDER THE OLIVE. 

PROMETHEUS {coming quickly Jorivard). 
What cry of murder do I hear in this still place ? 

EPIMETHEUS. 

Help, brother ! Hasten to us with thy mighty 
arm. 

EPIMELEIA. 

Quicken thy hurrying steps I Hasten, deliverer! 
here ! 

PHILEKOS. 

Finish, O hand ! and let deliverance lag behind. 

PROMETHEUS {stepj)wg between them). 

Go back, thou wretched man! Thou foolish 

raver, back! 
Is it thou, Phileros? Madman, I hold thee fast. 

[He seizes him. 

PHILEROS. 

My father, let me go I Thy presence I respect. 

PROMETHEUS. 

The father's absence also honors the good son. 
I hold thee now! — here in the grasp of my 
strong fist, — 



PANDORA. 233 

That ye may learn how crime first seizes upon 

men, 
And wise power holds at once the evil doer 

fast. 
To murder here! the unarmed! Go hence to 

rob and fight 
Whither unrule is rule! For where the law 

yet reigns, 
Where parents' will itself is law, there thou art 

naught. 
Hast thou not seen these chains, these mighty 

brazen chains? 
From metal forged for the twin horns of the 

wild bull? 
Yet for the unrestrained of human-kind more 

fit! 
Thy limbs shall be weighed down by them; a 

clanking noise 
Shall mark thy footsteps wheresoever thou 

shalt go. 
And yet what need of chains ? Thou art con- 
victed now. 
Condemned! Go yonder, seek and find the 

craggy rocks 
Far over sea and land where justly we flying 

down 



234 UNDER THE OLIVE. 

The madman, who like beast or like blind ele- 
ment 
Reckless and headlong drives to perish in the 

void. 

{He sets Mm free.) 

But now I loose my grasp! Out with thee, get 
thee hence ! 

Repent thou mayst, or be thyself thy punish- 
ment. 

PHILEROS. 

Thus thinkest thou, father, thy duty is done 

If the course of inflexible justice be run? 

And countest thou nothing the infinite power 

Which brought me, once happy, to this wretched 
hour? 

What lies on the ground in this bloody dis- 
tress ? 

'T is my lady, 't is she I obeyed, I confess. 

These hands that now struggle, these arms now 
fear-shaken. 

These arms and these hands are the same love 
hath taken. 

Why shudder, ye lips? Why complainest, 
thou, breast? 

Ye are signals unspoken of treacherous quest. 



PANDORA. 235 

Treacherous, yes! What she sacredly gave, 
She granted a second, a third might yet have. 
Now tell me, O father, who gave at her 

birth 
This one fearful perfected power to earth ? 
And who brought her hither, by what hidden 

way 
Came she from Olympus, or Hades, astray? 
Far sooner from destiny's hand mayst thou fly 
Than escape the devouring glance of her eye ; 
Far sooner the fates' unavoidable snare 
Than the entangling meshes of that flowing 

hair; 
Far sooner Sahara's bewildering stress 
Than the restless environing waves of her 

dress. 

{Epimetheus has raised Ejnmeleia and brought her 
round consolingly in such manner that her posture 
suits the words of Phileros.) 
Can this be Pandora? Her thou hast seen 

once, 
The undoing of fathers, the woe of the sons; 
Hephaistos adorned her with splendors un- 
told. 
Therein the g-ods ruin enwove with each fold. 



236 UNDER TEE OLIVE. 

How bright shone the vase! O how fairly 

't was wrought! 
Wherefrom heaven poured the bewildering 

draught. 
What hides in this coyness ? The boldness of 

wrong ; 
Unfaith here lies hid beneath laughter and 

song; 
The light of her face, mock and jesting are. 

found : 
Under breasts of a goddess the heart of a 

hound. 

tell me I lie ! Only say she is pure ! 

More welcome unreason than reason made 

sure. 
From unreason to reason how joyous the way, 
From reason to unreason ! what grief, what 

dismay I 
Now is your stern command the breath of my 

breath ; 

1 fly to fulfill it, I seek but for death; 
Deep down to her life she sucked my life in, 
There now remains nothing to lose or to win. 

[Goes. 



PANDORA. 237 

PROMETHEUS {to EpimeUia). 
Art thou ashamed ! Dost thou confess the 
charge he makes ? 

EPIMETHEUS. 

Perplexed indeed am I by what has happened 



EPiMELEiA (stepping between the two). 

Undisturbed, as one, together wandering; 
Circling planets shine on us below them; 
Moonlight touches all the peaks above us; 
In the foliage stir the little breezes. 
To the breezes whispers Philomela, 
Breathes the gladness of her youthful bosom, 
Wakened fresh from happy dreams of spring- 
time. 
Why, ye gods, O why is all unending 
Save our happiness, all, all, unending ! 
Light of stars, the moon with her soft shimmer, 
Cooling shadows, water's fall and murmur. 
All unending, save alone our gladness. 

Hear how sweet ! Upon a folded leaflet 
Placed between his lips the shepherd whistles; 



238 UNDER THE OLIVE. 

Cheerful prelude of the midday cricket 
Early spreading wide throughout the meadows. 
Yet is music of the chorded lyre 
Different to the heart: to that we listen, 
Saying, who wanders thitherward so early ? 
Who to golden strings can sing so ably? 
Thus the maiden questions, now she opens 
Quick the shutter, listens at the casement. 
And the youth marks; there is some one stir- 
ring ! 
Who ? He longs to know and lingers spying; 
So both linger spying at each other; 
Each the other sees in twilight glimmer. 
What is seen they think enough is known of, 
What they know, of that they wish possession. 
Longing fills their heart, their arms outstretch- 
ing 
Soon embrace; it is a holy compact; 
Hearts are glad in light of this fulfilling. 

AVhy, ye gods, ah why is all unending 
All unchanging, save alone our gladness! 
Light of stars, and love's dear affirmation; 
Gleam of moon, and love's complete confiding; 
Depth of shade, and love's inviolate longing, — 
All unending, only ends our gladness. 



PANDORA. 239 

Leave my bleeding wound! O leave it, fatlier! 
Slowly the thickening stream will stay itself; 
Let alone, the wound will soon be healing ; 
But the heart's blood stagnant in the bosom, 
Will that current ever be set flowing? 
Stricken heart, wilt thou renew thy beating? 

He is fled! Thy sternness drove him from us. 
Ah! I could not stay him, the rejected, 
While he raved at me and cursed blaspheming. 
Welcome now, despite his rage and cursing; 
For he loved me even while he scorned me; 
I was sweet to him even while he cursed me: 
Why did he mistake thus his beloved ? 
Will he live that he may come to know her? 

Left unlatched for him the garden wicket, 
I confess; for why should I deny it? 
Trouble conquers shame. A shepherd, straying, 
Pushed the gate and opened it exploring ; 
Bold and stealthy, soon the garden found he 
Where I waited ; there he seized upon me ; 
In an instant found himself was captured 
By one closely following. This one left me. 
Turned and fled, though he was followed swiftly 



240 UNDER THE OLIVE. 

After, whether slain or not, what know I? 

Phileros then chased me, pouring curses 

On my footsteps ; I sprang flying 

Through the bush and blossoms till the hedge- 
row 

Stopped me; then, fear- winged, I leaped me 
over 

Into the open country: quickly also 

Leaped he over; all the rest ye know of. 

Dearest father! Has Epimeleia 
Suffered for thee many days of trouble, 
Sadly now she beareth her own sorrow. 
And remorse comes dogging sorrow's footsteps. 
Still my cheeks may blush from Eos' kisses, 
But no more from his! and Helios lighten 
Pleasant paths he never more may visit. 
Let me go, O fathers, and be hidden ; 
Scorn me not forlorn, nor still my weeping ; 
Ah, what sadness! Ah, what grief unending! 
Losing of a love so wholly granted! 

PBOMETHEUS. 

Who is this child divine, wearing this noble 
form ? 



PANDORA. 241 

Like to Pandora, though she more caressing 

seems 
And lovelier; her beauty almost terrified. 

EPIMHTHKUS. 

Pandora's daughter proudly do I claim for 

mine. 
Epimeleia did we name the thoughtful child. 

PROMETHEUS. 

Why didst thou hide from me thy bliss of fath- 
erhood ? 

EPIMETHEUS. 

Estranged was I from thee, O thou most ex- 
cellent ! 

PROMETHEUS. 

Because of her whom I did not receive with 
love. 

EPIMETHEUS. 

Her whom you sent away, and whom my heart 
took home. 

PROMETHEUS. 

Didst thou give refuge, then, unto the danger- 
ous one? 

16 



242 UNDER THE OLIVE. 

KPIMETHEUS. 

The heavenly one! avoiding brothers' bitter 
feud. 

PROMETHEUS. 

How long remained the fickle one true unto 
thee? 

EPIMETHEUS. 

Her image still is true: it stands forever near. 

PROMETHEUS. 

And in her daughter's presence tortures thee 
afresh. 

EPIMETHEUS. 

Even grief itself for such a treasure is delight. 

PPvOMETHEUS. 

The hands of man can treasures daily find for 
him. 

EPIMETHEUS. 

Unworthy they, if he find not the highest good. 

PROMETHEUS. 

The highest good ! methinks all good to me is 
like. 



PANDORA. 243 

EPIMETHEUS. 

Ah, no! one passes all, and this one I have 
had! 

PKOMETHEUS. 

I seem to guess the path by which thou goest 
astray. 

EPIMETHEUS. 

1 do not go astray ; the right path beauty takes. 

PROMETHEUS. 

In form of woman all too Hghtly she misleads. 

EPIMETHEUS. 

Thou formest women which in no way can 
mislead. 

PBOMETHEUS. 

Yet are they shaped of finest clay, even the 
most rude. 

EPIMETHEUS. 

Foredestined by the man to serve him as his 
slave. 

PROMETHEUS. 

Then be a servant, thou, who scorn'st the faith- 
ful maid. 



244 UNDER THE OLIVE. 

EPIMETHEUS. 

I cease to answer tliee ; what on my heart and 

sense 
Is graven, in the silence gladly I rehearse. 

0, memory! what god-like power indeed is 

thine ! 
Again dost thou restore her young and noble 
form. 

PROMETHEUS. 

1, too, recall her lofty form from out the past; 
Hephaistos himself could not succeed thus, 

twice. 

EPIMETHEUS. 

But why must thou rehearse this fable of her 

birth ? 
From out the god-like old Titanic race she 

sprang ; 
Urania's child, sister of Here and of Zeus. 

PROMETHEUS. 

Yet thoughtfully Hephaistos her grace adorned; 
A golden head-net first he wove with skillful 

hand, 
The finest threads enwrought in various colors 

knit. 



PANDORA. 245 

EPIMETHEUS. 

This sacred confine could not hold her flowing 

hair, 
Tliat brown, abounding, and defiant wealth of 

hair ; 
One flaming lock rose shining from above her 

brow. 

PROMETHEUS. 

And therefore did he wind about it well-wrought 
chains. 

EPIMETHEUS. 

She wove that wondrous hair herself in shining 

braids. 
Which, serpent-like, unbound, down to her 

ankles fell. 

PROMETHEUS. 

Her diadem no rival had save Aphrodite's! 
Like fire, beyond all words to tell, it strangely 
shone. 

EPIMETHEUS. 

I only see where the familiar garland droops 
With full-blown flowers to hide her forehead 
and her brows, 



246 UNDER TEE OLIVE. 

The envious ones ; as warriors do their arch- 
ers hide 

With shields, so cover they the arrows of her 
eyes. 

PROMETHEUS. 

I saw that garland was confined by chain-like 

bands, 
Which round her shoulders lightly curled and 

fluttered down. 

EPIMETHEUS. 

The white pearls of her ears still float before 

my sight 
As freely in its grace she turned her noble head. 

TROMETHEUS. 

The threaded gifts of Araphitrite bound her 

throat. 
And then her garments' blooming field, how 

wonderful ! 
Her bosom veiled with varied splendors rich as 

spring. 

EPIMETHEUS. 

Upon that bosom where, I, happy, have been 
clasped ! 



PANDORA. 247 

PROMETHEUS. 

Above all things, the girdle's art is worthy 
praise. 

EPIMETHEUS. 

That very girdle which I loving have unloosed ! 

PROMETHEUS. 

First learned I from the dragon which her arm 

enwound 
How, serpent-like, hard metal may contract and 

stretch. 

EPIMETHEUS. 

And me, with these affectionate arms she hath 
embraced. 

PROMETHEUS. 

Her slender hand was greatened by her daz- 
zling; rings. 



a o- 



EPIMETHEUS. 

That hand outstretched so often giving my 
heart joy. 

PROMETHEUS. 

Did not her skill in art rival Athene's power? 



248 UNDER THE OLIVE. 

EPIMETHEUS. 

I know not: her soft fingers brought me but 
caressing. 

PROMETHEUS. 

Her mantle was quite worthy of Athene's 
loom. 

EPIMETHEUS. 

It swelling moved behind her steps in shimmer- 
ing waves. 

PROMETHEUS. 

The dazzling edge confused even the keenest 
eye. 

EPIMETHEUS. 

She drew the world upon the path that she 
would go. 

PROMETHEUS. 

En wrought were giant flowers, a horn of plenty 
each. 

EPIMETHEUS. 

Rich cups from whence leaped out quick creat- 
ures of the chase. 

PROMETHEUS. 

The roe sprang forth to fly, the lion to pursue. 



PANDORA. 249 

EPIMETHEUS. 

Who looked upon her robe, her moving foot 

once seen, 
Responsive like the hand answering the touoh 

of love ! 

PROMETHEUS. 

Here, too, unwearied, showed the artist's fur- 
ther skill; 

Her footstep speeding with soft yielding soles 
of gold. 

EPIMETHEUS. 

Like one with wings ! she hardly seemed to 
touch the earth. 

PROMETHEUS. 

The golden lacings lightly clasped her ankles 
round. 

EPIMETHEUS. 

Recall not back to me the splendor of her 
form ! 

To her, all-gifted, I had nothing more to give : 

The fairest, richest in adornment, she was 
mine! 

I gave myself to her, and thus first found my- 
self. 



250 UNDER THE OLIVE. 

PROMETHEUS. 

And still imliappy, thus she tears thee from 
thyself ! 

EPIMETHEUS. 

And yet, forever is she mine, the shining one! 

The fullness of blessedness, this have I found ! 
Beauty's self I possessed, by her I was bound; 
With Spring, her attendant, she stepped gayly 

on, 
I knew her and grasped her, and fate's work 

was done! ♦ 

As the mist of delusion is chased by the sun, 
She drew me from earth, and our heaven was 

won. 

Thou seekest for words the most worthy to 

praise her; 
Wouldst thou place her on high, higher yet her 

steps raise her ; 
With the best wouldst compare her, how bad 

seems the best ; 
She speaks, has found truth, while thy mind is 

in quest. 



PANDORA. 251 

She wins even while ye contend in hot zest ; 
Thou wouldst serve her, ah^eady her slave thou 
dost rest. 

Love and goodness are each in her shape to be 

seen. 
What use is high station ? She maketh it 

mean. 
She stands at the goal, and she wingeth the 

flight; 
If she crosses thy path, she stays thee at 

sight. 
A bargain wouldst drive, gives the price a new 

height. 
Thy wealth and thy wisdom must purchase her 

right. 

Descending she takes varied forms as her shield ; 

She floats on the water, she walks in the field ; 

Her bearing, her voice, are of standards di- 
vine, 

And the form doth but render the essence more 
fine ; 

She gives unto both of all nature's best wine ; 

A woman and young, it is thus she was mine! 



252 UNDER TEE OLIVE. 

PROMETHEUS. 

The beauty and the bliss of youth are close 

allied ; 
Upon these summits mortals may not linger 

long. 

EPIMETHEUS. 

And even in their change both are forever 
sweet ; 

Eternal to the chosen ones is joy once known. 

So freshly glorified Pandora's face appeared, 

Shining from out the veil woven of many 
hues, 

Which now she throws around her, hiding god- 
like limbs. 

Her countenance, alone revealed, far lovelier 
seems 

Than when 't was rivaled by the beauty of her 
form. 

It now becomes the perfect mirror of her soul. 

And she, the loveliest, sweetest, most confiding, 
yea, 

Trustful, was still more pleasing as a mystery. 

PROMETHEUS. 

Such transmutation signifies renewing joy. 



PANDORA. 253 

EPIMETHEUS. 

And new joys, she, grief-bringing, unto me did 
give. 

PROMETHEUS. 

Then tell me ! follows grief so quickly after joy ? 

EPIMETHEUS. 

One perfect day — the world was breaking into 

bloom — 
She met me in the garden covered with her 

veil, 
No more alone : for nestled in each arm she 

rocked 
A darling child; two daughters, twins, these 

half concealed. 
She lingered that my great astonishment and 

bliss 
She might behold, — my rapture as I pressed 

them close. 

PROMETHEUS. 

Alike were the two children, say, or different? 

EPIMETHEUS. 

Unlike and like ; resembling each the other 
much. 



254 UNDER THE OLIVE. 

PROMETHEUS. 

Perchance one wore tlie father's, one the moth- 
er's look. 

EPIMETHEUS. 

Thou hast the truth, as fits the experienced 

mind. 
Then said she to me : " Choose, — one shall be 

trusted unto thee. 
And one to me in keeping ! Quickly make thy 

choice ! 
Epimeleia call thou this ; Elpore this ! " 
I looked upon them. Roguishly the latter 

peeped 
From out her mother's veil ; when she had 

caught my look. 
She drew her back and hid upon that loving 

breast. 
Her sister, on the other hand, calm, almost 

sad, 
After she first had fixed her gaze upon my 

face. 
Still steadfast looked, holding mine eye fixed 

to her own. 
And won my heart to her, and would not let 

me go : 



PANDORA. 255 

She leaned toward me, stretching out her 

hand, and sought 
My help with the strong glance of one who 

thirsts for love. 
How could I withstand this ! I took her in my 

arras, 
Then feeling first a father, clasped her to my 

breast. 
And strove to banish from her brow too early 

care. 
So stood I, nor conceived Pandora vanished 

thus. 
I followed gayly, calling her, already far; 
But she, half turning toward me as I chased her 

steps, 
Waved with her hand an unmistakable fare- 
well; 
I stood and looked as turned to stone : I see 

her yet ! 
Three full-grown cypresses stand stretching 

up toward heaven 
There, where she took her way. She, turning 

in her flight, 
The child once more uplifted, once more showed 

it me, 
Already unattainable within her arms; 



256 UNDER THE OLIVE. 

And then, in the next instant, moving past 

those trees, 
She vanished. Never have I seen her form 

again. 

PROMETHEUS. 

Yet not so wonderful should this appear to one 

Who binds himself unto the demons thus god- 
sent. 

Nor blame I thee for thy great woe, poor wid- 
ower ! 

Who once was glad he still repeats his joy in 
grief. 

EPIMETHEUS. 

Indeed do I repeat it! Still those cypress trees 
Remain my only walk. There yet after my 

love 
I gaze where last she faded, passing from my 

sight. 
Perchance, I thought, by this same path she 

will return, 
And while my tears ran fountains, clasped my 

child 
Close, in its mother's stead. She looked on 

me and wept, 
Wondering, and moved by innocent sympathy. 



PANDORA. 257 

So do I live and wear the endless wasting 

time, 
Supported by my daughter's ever tender care, 
She who has now grown needful of her father's 

thought, 
Beyond endurance tried by most unhappy love. 

PROMETHEUS. 

Hast thou heard nothing from the twain in all 
this time ? 

EPIMETHEUS. 

Cruelly kind sometimes she comes, a morning 
dream 

In splendor, led by Phosphoros: and flattering 
flow 

Promises from her lips; caressing she draws 
near, 

Then wavering vanishes. By eternal change 

Thus she deceives my grief, — deceives by her 
sweet " Yes," 

Me, the imploring one, that she will still re- 
turn. 

PROMETHEUS. 

I know Elpore, brother; therefore am I kind 
17 



258 UNDER THE OLIVE. 

Unto your pain, and grateful for my human 

race. 
Thou and the goddess to it brought a lovely 

form, 
Although so close allied to those, the mist-born 

ones; 
Forever pleasing, she deceives the innocent; 
No son of earth would be without her. To the 

short-sight 
She is a second eye: may all have joy of her! 
But thou, who strengthenest thy daughter, 

strengthen thou 

What ! canst thou not hear me? Has the past 

all thine heart? 

EPIMETHEUS. 

Who from his fair one is doomed to be parted, 

Let him flee, in his going, with face turned 
away ! 

If he, looking back, still must gaze broken- 
hearted, 

She draws him, ah ! drags him, forever astray. 

Question ye not by the side of the dear one, 
Must she go ? Must / go ? A terrible pain 



PANDORA. 259 

Would seize upon thee, turning thee into 

stone, 
And despair would but make a loss of thy 

gain. 

If thou canst weep, and while tears come 

thronging 
See her, through distancing tears, as afar; 
Stay ! it may yet be ! to love and to longing 
Bendeth the night's most unmovable star. 

To hold her once more! once more feel the 

sweet wonder 1 
Joy to embrace and life disposessed! 
If no stroke of lightning shall rend ye asunder. 
More closely press ye, then, breast unto 

breast. 

Who from his fair one is doomed to be parted, 

Let him flee, in his going, with face turned 
away! 

If he, looking back, still must gaze broken- 
hearted. 

She draws him, ah ! drags him, forever astray. 



260 UNDER TEE OLIVE. 

PROMETHEUS. 

May that be called a blessing, wbich by its 
presence 

Shuts out and turns away whatever brings de- 
light, 

And, absent, torment gives, denying all com- 
fort! 

EPIMETHEUS. 

To lovers, fairest solace is unsolaced grief; 
Ever to strive for what is lost is finding more 
Than to grasp after new. What sorrow and 

vain care! 
Seeking to bring back what has passed so far, 

and win 
The unrestorable ! Ah! empty, fatal pain! 

Deep in the night plunges my sense 
Down through the shadows, seeking afar 
One figure, one look! Scarcely so clear 
She in the day stood to my view. 

Hardly to waver, seemed the sweet form; 
Swiftly she steps, just as of yore! 
Nearer she comes! Shall we embrace? 
Now she is gone, thing of the clouds. 



PANDORA. 261 

Soon she returns, brought by desire, 
Wavering now, floating in air, 
Now like another, now like herself, 
Vanishing still, keen though the sight. 

Hither she comes, yet once again, 
Clearer than ever stands in my path; 
Glorious! let me have chisel or brush! 
Turning mine eye frights her away. 

Yain is the toil ! There is no grief 
Deeper than this", sadder than this ! 
Stern though the laws Minos hath made, 
Shadows henceforth ever are dear. 

Once more let me strive hither to draw 
Thee now, my wife! hold thee embraced, 
Once more my joy! 't is but a shade! 
Now it grows dim, now it dissolves. 

PROMETHEUS. 

Dissolve thou not, my brother, swallowed up in 

grief ! 
Thou god-descended, think thou yet on nobler 

years I 



262 UNDER THE OLIVE. 

Unfitly come not tears unto the eye of youth; 
They strain the eye of age: I pray thee weep 
thou nof. 

EPIMETHEUS. 

The gift of tears can soften even the sharpest 

pain; 
They gladly flow as if to heal the inner smart. 

PROMETHEUS. 

Look up, beyond thy grief! See yonder the red 

heaven ! 
Hath Eos failed to find her accustomed path 

to-day ? 
From mid-sky hither see where dances a red 

glow! 
A fire from out thy woods, thy dwellings it may 

be, 
Appears to flame ! Fly thou 1 The presence of 

the lord 
Is often cause of good, and may stem many a 

loss. 

EPIMETHEUS. 

What have I now to lose, Pandora being gone! 
Let these be burned! Much better may be 
built ajjain. 



PANDORA. 263 

PROMETHEUS. 

Undoing is a good when there is no more use; 

And willingly I help! But accident we hate. 

Fly quickly, therefore, seek the men most near 
to us 

In thy command. Bid them withstand the rag- 
ing flames. 

Already do I hear the thickly swarming crowds, 

Equally quick alike to ruin or protect. 

EPIMELEIA. 

Help I cry for, 
Not for me, no — 
I have no need — 
Listen, hear it! 
Help those yonder ; 
Ruin threatens: 
I was ruined 
Long, how long, since. 

When he, death-struck, 
Fell, my shepherd. 
Luck then fled too; 
Vengeance now works : 
Waste and loss come 
From his race here. 



264 UNDER THE OLIVE. 

Fall the fences, 
Breaks the woodland, 
Mighty flames rise. 
Through the red smoke 
Seethes the balsam 
From the pitch-pine. 

Now the roof goes, 
Quickly burns up. 
Cracks the ridge-pole I 
Ah! it falls down, 
Falls on my head, 
Far though I be ! 
Guilt is seen clear! 
Eyes bend on me, 
Dark brows command 
Justice to seek. 

Turn I may not 
Where my loved one, 
Phileros mad, 
Hath cast him down 
In the sea- wave. 
Whom he loves shall 
Worthy prove her! 



PANDORA. 265 

Love and remorse drive 
Me thus flameward, 
Who in rage fled 
Love's fierce burning. 

EPIMETHEUS. 

I will save her, — 
Her, my only! 
I defend her 
With my full strength, 
Till Prometheus 
Send his army. 
Then renew we 
Angry contests; 
We shall free us; 
They shall fly then, 
Flames extinguished. 

PROMETHEUS. 

Up, the work calls! 
See them swarm now 
Round the steep cliffs 
Of your night home ; 
Up through bushes, 
On the roof-top, 
Buzzing, striving. 



266 UNDER THE OLIVE. 

Ere ye draw off 
To the far land, 
Be ye helpful 
To your neighbor. 
Seek to free him 
From this blow of 
Savage vengeance. 

WARRIORS. 

The masters' call, 
The fathers' need. 
We follow, all, 
At our best speed ; 
Born thus to find 
Our way through strife ; 
Like storm and wind, 
It is our life. 

We go, we go. 
And nothing say 
Of why we go, 
Or what the way : 
And sword or spear 
We bear afar. 
And there or here 
We fear no scar. 



PANDORA. 267 

We follow brave, 
To try our powers, 
What gain we have 
The gain is ours. 
Would any keep 
What we have won, 
They waste and weep 
Ere they have done. 

Has one enough, 
Yet wishes more. 
Then, wild and rough, 
We snatch his store. 
His home is sacked. 
His house is burned, 
His goods are packed. 
Ere we have turned. 

Quick from the place 
The first is gone. 
And draws apace 
The second on. 
Through thick and thin 
The best must break. 
The last come in 
Their rights to take. 



268 UNDER TEE OLIVE. 

PEOMETHEUS. 

Ready are ye 
For good or ill I 
Devote ye, see 
Ye work my will. 
Up ! Easy sons, 
Bring your swift stroke, 
The mighty ones 
Shall feel the yoke. 

Here wise and gladly works the high compelling 

power 
Of voluntary service ; the fire already pales, 
And, brother-like, my race their worthy labor 

brings. 
Now Eos, undelaying, swiftly strives to mount, 
In maiden beauty springing, — scattering crim- 
son flowers 
From her full hands. See, on the fringe of 

every cloud, 
How rich they bloom, shifting their hues in 

endless change! 
So lovely steps she, such is her increasing 

charm 
The son of earth is wont to veil his too weak 

sight. 



PANDORA. 269 

Lest Helios' arrows should by chance my people 

blind ; 
The illumined they may look upon, but not the 

light. , 

EOS {rising from the ocean). 
Youth thy roses, day thy blossoms, 
Sweeter bring I now than ever, 
From the unexplored recesses. 
From unsounded deeps of ocean. 
Speedily the day hath banished 
Sleep, that dwells around these waters, 
Haunts this rock-encircled harbor; 
Earnest fisher, fresh from slumber, 
Take your implements in hand ! 

Quickly noAv your nets unwinding. 
Girdle ye the well-known precinct! 
Certain of a lucky capture, 
Cheerily I urge ye on. 
Swim, O swimmer! Dive, O diver! 
Watch, O watcher, from the cliff-side! 
Banks shall swarm as swarm the waters 
With the tide of busy doers. 



270 UNDER THE OLIVE. 

PROMETHEUS. 

Thou flying one, why dost thou stay thy foot- 
step here? 

Why fixest thou thy glance upon this harbor 
shore ? 

Whom dost thou summon, ever-dumb, whom 
dost command ? 

Since no one hears beside, this time speak 
thou to me ! 

EOS. 

Save this youth, O save him, save him! 
Who, despairing and love-drunken, — 
Drunken for revenge and chided, 
Down into the veiling waters. 
From the rock hath flung himself. 

PROMETHEUS. 

What do 1 hear V Hath Phileros obeyed the 
word, 

And sought a watery death, — himself con- 
demned to die ? 

Up! let us fly, that I may give him back to 
life. 

EOS. 

Stay, O Father! Has thy chiding 
Driven him to seek his ending ? 



PANDORA. 271 

All thy wisdom, all thy striving-, 
Cannot bring him back to thee. 
Only will of gods all mighty, 
Moved by the un wasted striving 
Of his life, so pure and simple, 
Gives him, new-born, back to thee. 

PROMETHEUS. 

Is he then rescued? Answer me, and seest 
thou him? 

EOS. 

Yonder see the stalwart swimmer, 
Down he dives beneath the waters; 
For the joy of life upholds him, 
Will not suffer him to sink. 
Gently sport the waves around him. 
Crisply curling, fresh as morning, 
Bearing him their lovely burden. 
Who but plays among the waves. 
All the fishers, all the swimmers, 
Lively gather round about him, 
Linger near him, not to save him, 
But to frolic in the bath. 
There the dolphins dance around them, 
Form a circle there together. 



272 UNDER THE OLIVE. 

Diving down and fetching upward 
Him, the lovely, the refreshed; 
All the floating crowd tumultuous 
Swiftly bring him back to land. 

And in life as well as freshness 
Land will nothing yield to ocean ; 
Every hill and every cliff-side, 
Gladdened by the Uving crowd ! 
Every vintner from his wine-press, 
Drawing from his rocky cellar, 
One cup, then another offers. 
To the animated waves. 
Now the god-like one arises. 
From the sea-foam all-embracing, 
From the good sea-monsters friendly; 
Richly decked with mine own roses. 
He, an Anadyomen, 
Seeks the rocks. The crowned goblet 
By the hand of age is offered, 
One who, bearded, smiles contented 
With an air most like to Bacchus. 

Clash, ye cymbals! Sound, ye timbrels! 
Press ye round him, blessing him. 



PANDORA. 273 

While I bathe his lovely person 

With my glances full of love. 

From his shoulders skins of panthers 

Fall, his tender thighs half-hiding ; 

In his hands he holds the thyrsus, 

And how like a god he steps. 

Hear'st rejoicing? Hear'st the clanging? 

Now the day's exalted festal, 

Now the general joy begins. 

PROMETHEUS. 

Why tell me of thy festivals ? I love them not; 
The weary find enough refreshment every 

night. 
In doing, the true man finds his best holiday! 



Varied riches changing hours bring to us ; 
But the hours of joy are the god-chosen! 
Eos glances toward the heavenly spaces, 
Where she sees the fate of day unfolded. 
Thence the worthiest, loveliest, descending, 
Hidden first, but soon to be laid open, 
Is revealed, and soon again is hidden. 
Phileros steps forth from out the waters, 
18 



274 UNDER TEE OLIVE. 

From the flame comes out Epimeleia; 

Now they meet again, and each the other 

Feels as if the same and yet another. 

Thus in love united, doubly joyful, 

Take they up their journey. Heaven sends 

downward 
Both by word and deed a blessing on them ; 
Gifts descend were formerly undreamed of. 

PKOMETHEUS. 

New things please me not, sufficient favor 
Now already has this race of mortals. 
Only in the present do they sojourn. 
Rarely dwell on yesterday's achievements, 
On its loss or gain ; the whole is vanished. 
Even grasp they roughly at the moment 
What they meet with, take it to themselves, 

then. 
Careless, fling it from them, never thinking 
Of the seed that sleeps within its essence. 
This I blame ; yet neither speech nor lesson. 
Nor example, even, can avail them. 
They go onward like to thoughtless children, 
Groping after what the day contains. 
Could the past be treasured in their spirit, 



PANDORA. 275 

Moulding fitly by its light the present, 
This were well for all : thus could I wish it. 



Longer I may not stay, for Helios' coming 
Drives me unresisting with his arrows. 
In his shining glance already tremble 
Fainting drops of dew which star my garland. 
Father of men, farewell ! I pray you listen : 
Remember, the desired is what earth wishes, 
But what is best to give is known in heaven. 
The Titans begin greatly ; but to follow 
On to eternal good, eternal beauty, 
This is the gods' work; let us trust their work 



THE END. 



NOTES. 



NOTES. 



Pkelude. (Page 3.) 
"I compared the Greek world with the period of ado- 
lescence, not in the sense, that youth bears within it 
a serious anticipative destiny, and consequently, by 
the very conditions of its culture, urges towards an 
ulterior aim, presenting thus an inherently incomplete 
and immature form, and being the most defective when 
it would deem itself perfect, — but in the sense, that 
youth does not yet present the activity of work — does 
not yet exert itself for a defiliite intelligent aim, — but 
rather exhibits the concrete freshness of the soul's 
life." — Hegel's Philosophy of History. 



The Lyric Muse. (Page 11.) 
"Oil trouver les anciens Grecs? Ce n'est pas dans 
le coin obscur d'uue vaste biblioth^que et courbd sur 
des pupitres mobiles charges d'une longue suite de 



280 UNDER THE OLIVE. 

manuscrits poudreux : mais un fusil a la main, dans 
les forets d'Amerique, chassant avec les sauvages de 
rOuabache. Le climat est moins heureux, mais volla 
ou sont aujourdhui les Achilles et les Hercules." — De 
Stendhal. 

" Es wird ein Friihling kommen, 
Der bringt was ward genommen, 
Die Blumen und den Kranz. 
Sei freudig, sei geschmucket, 
Die unschuld is ein Glanz 1 



Und kommt der ernste Winter, 
Dann sei wie andre Kinder, 
An meiner Wiege froh." 
Da spracL, das Kind ergeben ; 
*• Ja Kind, das ■will ich so ! 

" All, was du mir bescheret, 
Hab ich von dir begehret, 
Mit Liedes Plug und Fall, 
Drum will ich dir lobsingen 
Trotz Lerch, trotz Nachtigall." 

Pater Friedrich Spee. 

To THE Poetess. (Page 15.) 
Among the ancients Sappho was called "The Poet- 
ess " and Homer "The Poet." 

" Chaste Sappho, with thy dark tresses and thy gen- 
tle smile, fain would I speak, but awe restrains me." — 
Alc^us. 
Plato calls her the tenth muse. The most important 



NOTES. 281 

and only perfect poem preserved to us is a magnificent 
Ode to the Goddess of Love. See version of this Ode, 
by Mr. J. A. Symonds, in an appendix to his first 
series of the Greelv poets ; also one by Mr. Edwin Ar- 
nold in "Poems " (1880). " There is enough of heart- 
devouring passion in Sappho's own verse," writes Mr. 
Symonds, "without the legends of Phaon and the cliff 
of Leucas. These dazzling fragments — 

"* Which, still, like sparkles of Greek fire, 
Burn on through time and ne'er expire ' — 

are the ultimate and finished forms of passionate utter- 
ance." Every vestige that is left of her is shrined in 
Bergk, pp. 874, 924. 

" poet — woman! none foregoes 
The leap, attaining the repose ! " 

Elizabeth Barrett Browning. 

^sCHYLus. (Page 17.) 

"Old age and decay lay hold of the body, the senses, 
the memory, the mind, — never of the self, the looker- 
on." — Max MiJLLEK, Ujjhanished. 

From the time of liis first tragic victory- (Olymp. 73, 4; 
B. c. 485), ^schylus wrought with all the energy and 
patience of a great genius at his art. According to the 
most credible account he won thirteen tragic victories. 
Yet be is reported to have been exceedingly hurt at 
the success of Sophocles in traged}^, by whom he was 
defeated in 4G8, b, c. See Mahaffy. 

"To be the centre of a living multitude, the heart of 



282 UNDER THE OLIVE. 

their hearts, the brain from which thoughts as waves 
pass through thein, this is the best and purest joy which 
a human being can know." — Dowden's Essays. 
" Aischulos' bronze-throat eagle-bark at blood 
Has somehow spoilt my taste for twitterings.-' 

R. Browning, Arist. Ap. p. 94. 

" Je ne puis m'empecher de faire un triste retour de 
ce grand empire de France sur un petit peuple, le peu- 
ple d'Athenes. Ou est ici la gravity, la saintete du 
theatre antique? Savez vous bien qui occupait la 
sc^ne, qui portait la drame du theatre V Le plus vail- 
lant soldat Eschyle ; le vainqueur, apr^s la victoire, 
venait la raconter lui raeme. Et savez-vous qui jouait, 
quels etaient les acteurs ? C'etaient souvent les premiers 
magistrats ; quand il s'agissait de reproduire les hdros 
ou les dieux, ils n'h^sitaient pas a paraitre sur la 
scene, regardant comme une fonction publique d'^lever, 
d'agrandir I'ame du peuple. Et dans la circonstance 
la plus grave du monde, apres Marathon, cette mer- 
veilleuse victoire de la civilization sur la barbaric, 
lorsqu' Athenes voulut remercier les dieux de la patrie 
d' avoir sauve la ville, les magistrats ne furent pas assez, 
personne ne parut assez digne; on cliercha dans tout 
le peuple, ou trouva une creature virginale, marquee 
du sceau des dieux, rayonnante de jeunesse, de beautd, 
de genie ; ce f ut la jeune Sophocle qui f ut charg^ de 
paraitre seul devant les dieux pour la ville d'Athenes. 
11 avait quinze ans alors, et de quinze ans a quatre- 
vingts, par une production non iuterrompus, dont rien 



NOTES. 283 

dans nos ecrivains modernes pent donner I'idde, il fit 
representer cent dranies et fut pendant tout un si^cle 
I'interprete du gdnie d'Athenes et le mediateur entre 
les dieux et le peuple. — Michelet, L'Etudiant. 
" Athens, — a city Buch as vision 
Builds from the purple crags and silver towers 
Of battlemented cloud, as in derision 
Of kingliest masonry." 

Shelley's Ode to Liberty. 

Sophocles. (Page 27.) 

" Sophocles, 
With that king's look." 

Elizabeth Barrett Browning. 

" In Sophocles, tragedy has long since broadened from 
its source, and the strictly religious motive is veiled 
under the free handling of triumphant art. Hardly 
any of his subjects are taken immediately from the 
Dionysiac legend. The gods seldom come upon the 
scene, and their several attributes are less distinct than 
in JEschylus. Their absolute control of human things 
appears indirectly. They work through the passions 
of men. But the Bacchic fire still springs forth un- 
bidden." — /So/> A oc/es, by Lewis Campbell, M. A., 
LL. D., Professor of Greek in the University of St. 
Andrew. 

"The audience of ^schylus and Sophocles were, in 
fact, the Athenian citizens, en masse, assembled in the 
spirit of Dionysus at moments of high solemnity, and 
finding in his observance an outlet for profound emo- 



284 UNDER TEE OLIVE. 

tions which stirred them individually and socially. 
They were a people who had lately learned that polit- 
ical freedom is an excellent thing, but knew not yet 
all that it meant, or into what struggles and dangers 
it might hereafter carry them ; a people who had 
learned and had taught mankind that national inde- 
pendence is a thing worth fighting for, but had too 
weak a hold of the other lesson which they had also 
taught by their example, that the federation of free 
peoples is nobler than any form of tyranny ; a people 
with glorious memories and boundless possibilities, but 
surrounded with unknown dangers. This people gave 
their whole attention to tragic performances for days 
together, year after year. Was there ever such an 
opportunity ? And never was great opportunity more 
grandly met." — The Same. 

"The primary aim of tragedy is to excite universal 
sympathy for an ideal sorrow, and to give expression 
and relief to human emotion. In a great community, 
there is a mass of grief and care which, in the common 
daylight of the market-place assembly, is conveniently 
ignored. Thus each heart is left to a knowledge of its 
own bitterness, and pines in isolation. But when men 
are drawn together to a spectacle of imagined woe, 
placed vividly before the faithful witness of the eye, 
the fountain of tears within them is unlocked, and so- 
ciety of grief is gained without confession. Feeling is 
at once consoled by communion, and sheltered in the 
privacy of a crowd. For all who have ajiy depth iu 



NOTES. 285 

them, however habitually light-hearted, such an occa- 
sional overflow is tranquillizing, while those whose 
burden presses heavily are eased and comforted. They 
are rapt from the narrow contemplation of their own 
destiny into a world where all private trouble is anni- 
hilated, and yet is typified so as to give an excuse for 

tears A direct result of tragic representation is 

the enlargement of sympathy. The poet sets before 
the spectators a life different from and yet akin to 
theirs, which, however strange to them, powerfully 
stirs their hearts." — The Same. 

"Is there in all philosophy a thing more dignified, 
more holy, or moi-e lofty, than well ordered tragedy; 
more effective for the concentrated contemplation of 
the catastrophes and revolutions of human life?" — 
John Milton. 

"In the Periclean age, reflecting persons, for the 
first time, formed a clear conception of Human Nature. 
It is his firm grasp of this idea from the intellectual 
side that above all else gives permanent value to the 
work of Thucydides. The same thought is not less 
clearly apprehended by Sophocles in the form of feel- 
ing, although in his mind it is never dissociated from 
the recognition of poAvers above humanity, of a ' divin- 
ity that shapes our ends.' Less speculative than JEschy- 
lus, less skeptical than Euripides, he acknowledges in 
each event a revelation of the divine will, which he 
regards as just even when inscrutable. But his strong- 
est lights are thrown upon the human figures them- 



286 UNDER THE OLIVE. 

selves, which appear out of the darkness and go into 
darkness again. So far as this can be achieved by art, 
the predestined catastrophe is brought about by the 
natural effect of circumstances on character, according 
to the saying of Heraclitus in the previous century, 
'Man's character is his destiny.' The gods are, for 
the most part, withdrawn to their unseen Olympus, 
whilst their will is done ou earth by seemingly acci- 
dental means. The tradition of a fore-determined doom 
is used by the poet as an instrument for evoking fear 
and pity: the blindness of the agents makes us feel 
doubl}' for their fate, and gives a deeper impression of 
the feebleness and nothingness of man. And yet this 
Man, who is nothing, a shadow passing away, is the 
central object of our sympathies ; and this life of his, 
so feeble in the sight of heaven, yet seems with every 
drama of Sophocles that is seen or read, more rich in 
noble possibilities." — Lkwis Campbell. 

"The (Ed'qjus Colonens is a sublime religious poem; 
but, as compared with the two other Theban plays, it 
must be acknowledged to have less of concentrated 
tragic power. The dramatic structure is still most ad- 
mirable, but more scope is given to lyrical and rhetor- 
ical effects." — The Same. 

"In the heroes of his extant plays, Sophocles pre- 
sents five 'ages of man,' — the boy, the full-grown 
warrior, the established ruler, the afflicted solitary, the 
time-worn wanderer whose end is peace." — The Same, 

"The most typical and regular in structure of the 



NOTES. 287 

choral odes are those which hold a central place in 
each of the great tragedies, where the action pauses 
for a moment before hurrying to its consummation : in 
the Ajax^ 'O isle of glory; ' in the Antigone.^ 'of won- 
ders without end, most wonderful is man ; ' in the 
(Edipus Tyrannus, 'May it be mine to keep the un- 
written laws;' in the Coloneus, 'Friend, in this land 
of noblest steeds thou art come,' etc. In each of these 
we have a lyric poem of the highest beauty, which at 
the same time holds a distinct place in the economy of 
the drama." — The Same. 

" Who saw life steadily and saw it whole." 

Matthew Arnold. 

" The close of Sophocles' life was troubled with fam- 
ily dissensions. Jophon, his son by an Athenian wife, 
and therefore his legitimate heir, was jealous of the 
affection manifested by his father for his grandson So- 
phocles, the offspring of another son, Ariston, whom 
he had had by a Sicj'onian woman. Fearing lest his 
father should bestow a great part of his property upon 
his favorite, lophon summoned him before the Phra- 
tores, or tribesmen, on the ground that his mind was 
affected. The old man's only reply was, 'If I am 
Sophocles, I am not beside myself; and if I am beside 
myself, I am not Sophocles.' Then taking up his 
(Edipus at Colonus, which he had lately written, but 
had not yet brought out, he read from it the beautiful 
choral ode, with which the judges were so struck they 
at once dismissed the case. He died shortly afterward, 



288 UNDER THE OLIVE. 

in B. c. 406, in his ninetieth year." — Smith's History 
of Greece — Felton. 

"Alcman first gave artistic form to the choral lyric 
by arranging that the chorus, while singing, should 
execute alternately a movement to the right (strophe, 
'turning'), and a movement to the left (antistrophe); 
and he composed the songs which the chorus was to 
sing in couples of stanzas called strophe and antistrophe, 

ansAvering to these balanced movements Ste- 

sichorus 'marshal of choruses,' completed the form of 
the choral lyric . . . . b}"^ adding the epoch sung by 
the chorus while it remained stationary after the move- 
ments to right and left." — R. C Jebb, M. A., Greek 
Literature. 

"As an artist, as a perfect exponent of that intense- 
ly Attic development Avhich in architecture tempered 
Doric strength with Ionic sweetness, which in sculpture 
passed from archaic stiffness to majestic action, which 
in all the arts found the mean between antique repose 
and modern vividness, as the poet of Athens, in the 
heyday of Athens, Sophocles stands without an equal. 
His plots are more ethical than those of Euripides; his 
skepticism is more reverent or reticent." . . . . — Ma- 
haffy's History of Classical Greek Literature. 

"In that elaborate piece of dramatic criticism . . . , 
the Frogs, it is extremely interesting to notice both 
the respectful reserve with which Sophokles is treated 
as if he were almost above criticism, and the particular 
force of the few passages in which Aristophanes more 



NOTES. 289 

expressly refers to him 'Even-tempered alike 

in lite and death, — in the world above and in the world 
below,' is the brief but expressive phrase in which his 
character is summed up." — Philip Smith, in Class. 
Diet. 

" Sophocles was born in the deme Colonos, within 
half an hour's walk of Athens, iu the scenery which he 
describes in his famous chorus of the Second (Eclipus, 
and which has hardly altered up to the present day, 
amid all the sad changes which have seamed and scarred 
the fair features of Attica. I know not, indeed, why 
he calls it the white Colonos, for it was then, as now, 
hidden in deep and continuous green. The dark ivy 
and the golden crocus, the white poplar and the gray 
olive, are still there. The silvery Cephissus still feeds 
the pleasant rills, with which the husbandman waters 
his thickly wooded cornfields; and in the deep shade 
the nightingales have not yet ceased their plaintive 
melody. — Mahaffy's History of Classical Greek Lit- 
erature. 

"The skill of Sophocles as a dramatic poet is dis- 
played in all its splendor hy the new light thrown upon 

the central figure of- CEdipus In his new phase 

the man of haste and wrath is no longer heedless of 
oracles ; nor does he let their words lie idle iu his mind. 
It is, therefore, with a strong presentiment of approach- 
ing death that he discovers early in this play that his 
feet, led by Antigone, have rested in the grove of the 
Furies at Colonos. The place itself is fair. There are 
19 



290 UNDER THE OLIVE. 

liere no Hai'py-gorgons with blood-shot eyes, and vipers 
twining in their matted hair. The meadows are dewy 
witli orocus-fiowers and narcissus; in the thickets of 
olive and laurel nightingales keep singing, and rivu- 
lets spread coolness in the midst of summer heat. The 
whole wood is hushed, and very fresh and wild. A 
solemn stillness broods there; for the feet of the pro- 
fane keep far away, and none may tread the valley- 
lawns but those who have been purified. The ransomed 
of the Lord walk there. This solemnity of peace per- 
vades the whole play, forming, to borrow a phrase from 
painting, the silver-grav harmon}' of the picture. In 
thus bringing Qildipus to die among the unshowered 
meadows of those Dread Ladies, whom in his troubled 
life he found so terrible, but whom, in his sublime pas- 
sage from the world, he is about to greet resignedly, we 
may trace peculiar depth of meaning. The thought of 
death, calm but austere, tempers every scene in the 
drama. We are in the presence of one whose life is 
ended, who is about to merge the fever of existence 
in the tranquillity beyond. This impression of solem- 
nity is heightened when we remember that the poet 
wrote the Coloneus in extreme old age. Over him, 
too, the genius of everlasting repose already spread 
wings in the twilight, and the mysteries of the grave 
were nearer to him and more daily present than to 
other men. — J. Addington Symokds, Studies oj' the 
Greek Poets. 



NOTES. 291 

" Let there be light I said Liberty, 
And like sunrise from the sea, 
Athens arose I Around her bom, 
Shone like mountains in the morn 
Glorious states ; and are they now 
Ashes, wrecks, oblivion ? Go 
Where Thermae and Asopus swallowed 
Persia, as the sand does foam. 
Deluge upon deluge followed, — 
Discord, Macedon, and Rome. 
And lastly thou I temples and towers. 
Citadels and marts, and they 
TVTio live and die there have been ours 
And may be thine, and must decay ; 
But Greece and her foundations are 
Built below the tide of war. 
Based on the crystalline sea 
Of thought and its eternity : 
Her citizens, imperial spirits, 
Rule the present from the past. 
On all this world of men inherits 
Their seal is set." 

Percy Bysshe Shelley, 

Euripides. (Page 37.) 

"Euripides was all his life," says Mahaffy, *'a pro- 
lific and popular, though not a successful poet. He 
was known to have won the first prize ox\\\ five times, 
though he may have written ninety tragedies. 

"He has been well called 'der Prophet des Welt- 
schmerzes." 



292 UNDER THE OLIVE. 

" Triumphant play, whereiu our poet Srsfc 
Dared bring the grandeur of the tragic two 
Down to the level of our common life, 
Close to the beating of our common heart.'' 

Robert Browning, Aristophanes'' Apology. 

" The lyrics of Euripides are among the choicest 
treasures of Greek poetry: they flow like mountain 
rivulets, flashing with sunbeams, eddying in cool, 
shady places, rustling through leaves of mint, forget- 
me-not, marsh-marigold, and dock." — Symonds, 
Greek Tragedy and Euripides. 

''Erery Greek poet (I might indeed say every poet) 
is strictly the child of his day, the exponent of a na- 
tional want, the preacher of a national aspiration, at 
once the outcome and the leader of a literary public, or, 
at least, of a public which craves after spiritual suste- 
nance But in no case are these considerations 

more important than in that of Euripides, the poet 
who has bequeathed to us the largest and most varied 
materials to estimate his age; while, on the other hand, 
his age — the age of Thucydides and of Aristophanes, 
of Pericles and of Alkibiades, of Phidias and of Al- 
kamenes — is the best known and most brilliant epoch 
in Athenian history. He was indeed no public man, 
but a confirmed student, a lover of books and of soli- 
tude ; but yet certainl}'- the personal friend of Pericles 
and Socrates, his elder and younger contemporaries, 
the hearer of Anaxagoras and Prodicus; if not the ac- 
tive promoter, at least the close observer, of all that was 



NOTES. 293 

great and brilliant in Athens, then the Hellas of Hel- 
las, the inmost and purest shrine of all the national 
culture." — Mahaffy, Eurijyides. 

"When Euripides produced his first play JEschylus 
was just dead, and though Sophocles was in the zenith 
of his fame, and the delight of all Athens, men must 
have looked anxiously for the appearance of a new 
poet, who would succeed to the place left vacant by* 
the veteran dramatist. To such Euripides must have 
been indeed disappointing. 

" His last plays came out about the time of Sophocles' 
death, when men despaired of seeing any worthy heir 
of either in tragedy, for the younger generation had 
tried in vain to rival these poets even in their old age, 
as Aristophanes plainly informs us. Thus our poet's 
life extended from the noon to the sunset of Greek 
tragedy. His posthumous plays were the rich after- 
glow when that glorious day was gone We will- 
ingly believe the story that the aged Sophocles showed 
deep sorrow at the death of the rival from whom he 
learned so much ; but, by way of painful contrast, we 
find Aristophanes composing upon the death of Euri- 
pides, his bitter and unsparing onslaught in the Frogs. 
For at this time, as we shall see in the sequel, the play- 
going world at Athens was rapidly veering round in 
favor of the much-abused and oft-slighted poet; and 
Aristophanes must have felt with disappointment, that 
the matchless brilliancy of his satire was, after all, 
powerless against the spirit of the times and the genius 



294 UNDER THE OLIVE. 

of his opponent Far deeper than the personal 

griefs of Euripides, there lay upon his spirit the con- 
stant melancholy of unsolved doubts, of unsettled prob- 
lems, of seeking for the light in vain, and of hoping 
against hope for the moral reformation of mankind. 
Hence our beautiful extant busts and statues i-e present 
him worthily as the 'poet of the world's grief,' gen- 
tle, subdued, and full of sorrowing sympathy. Nor is 
there any authentic portrait left us from the great days 
of Athens so interesting, or so thoroughly cosmopolitan 
as that of the poet Euripides The continued riv- 
alry with Sophocles, the most successful of all tragic 
poets, the darling of Athens, the most consummate art- 
ist of his day, must have powerfully affected him. The 
two poets indeed differed widely in their conception of 
the drama. When they treated the same subjects (as 
they often did) they appealed to different interests, and 
seem never to have copied, seldom to have criticised 
one another. But we find that Euripides, the more 
conscious and theoretical artist, showed the stronger 
character even in his art; for the latest extant drama 
of Sophocles (the Philocletes) shows a striking likeness 
to the plays of Euripides, while the reverse is anything 
but true; the latest plays of Euripides (the Bacchce 
and Aulid Iphif/enia) show no traces of an increased 
influence from the side of Sophocles. 

"Yet, broadly speaking, it is plain that our poet was 
no originator in the external appliances, or even in the 
general internal plan of the Greek drama. His great 



NOTES. 295 

predecessors had introduced him to the Muse of Trag- 
edy, as it were dwelling in a splendid temple, and hon- 
ored with an established worship No Greek 

poet ever received more constant and unsparing ad- 
verse criticism, and from the ablest possible critic. To 
have outlived, nay, to have conquered such attacks, is 

in my mind an astonishing proof of genius The 

present centurv, while correcting the antipathies of 
Schiegel's school, has nevertheless not reinstated Euri- 
pides completely into his former position. 

"We understand iEschylus at last, and see in him a 
giant genius, without parallel in the history of Greek 
literature. We find in Sophocles a more perfect artist, 
in complete harmony with his materials, and justifying 
the uniform favor of the Attic public. But many re- 
cent editors and historians, and one of our greatest 
poets, Mr. Browning, have set themselves to assert for 
Euripides his true and independent position beside those 
rivals, who have failed to obscure or displace him. The 
Germans, indeed, still infected by Schlegel, talk of Eu- 
ripides as the poet of the ochlocracy, that debased 
democracy which they have invented at Athens, after 
the suggestion of Thucydides. But a sounder art crit- 
icism, based upon the results of English and French 
scholarship, which does not spoil its delicacy and blunt 
its edge by the weight of erudition, has turned with 
renewed affection to the sympathetic genius, who de- 
lighted the wild Parthian chiefs with his Bacchic rev- 
els, who supplied the patient monk with sorrows for his 



296 UNDER TEE OLIVE. 

suffering Christ, who witnessed (in truth a very mar- 
tyr) to truth and nature in the stilted rhetoric of the 
Roman stage, in the studied pomp of 'the French court; 
who fed the j'outh of Racine and of Voltaire ; who 
revived the slumbering flame of Altieri's genius; who 
even in these latter days has occupied great and orig- 
inal poets of many lands — Schiller, Shelley, Alfieri, 
Browning — with the task of reproducing in their 
tongues his pathos and his power." — Mahaffy on 
Euripides. 

" Our Euripides the human, 

With his droppings of warm tears, 
And his touches of things common, 
Till they rose to touch the spheres." 

Elizabeth Barrett Browning. 

" Loved by Sokrates."' 

Robert Brownino. 

" The intimacy of Euripides with Socrates is beyond 
a doubt, and it is said that the latter never entered the 
theatre unless when the plays of his friend were acted." 
Smith's Classical Dictionary. 

•' Lucian, at the beginning of his treatise on the man- 
ner in which history ought to be written, says that the 
people of Abdera, a city in Thrace, during the reign of 
Lysimachus, were so affected by the performance of 
the Andromede of Euripides that they ran raving about 
the streets, repeating from it the ' Invocation of Love.' 

" ' Tyrant of gods and men, Love, forbear,' etc., 



NOTES. 297 

till a severe winter restored them to their senses." — 
Woodhull's Translation, quoted from unpublished 
notes on Aristophanes' Apology of Robert Browning, 
by L. L. Thaxter. 

The Lantern of Sestos. (Page 43.) 
"Among the lonians of Asia Minor was developed 
the pathetic melody of the Elegiac metre, which first 
was apparently used to express the emotions of love 
and sorrow, and afterwards (see Goethe) 'came to be 
thevehicleof moral sentiment and all strong feeling.' " 
J. A. Symonds, Studies of the Greek Poets. 

"The idea that Spirit is immortal involves this, 
that the human individual inherently possesses infinite 
value. The merely Natural appears limited, absolutely 
dependent upon something other thaa itself, and has 
its existence in that other; but immortalit}' involves 
the inherent infinitude of Spirit." — Hegel's P/w7os- 
ophy of History. 

"When Leander was drowned, the inhabitants of 
Sestos consecrated Hero's lanterne to Anteros ; Anteroti 
sacrum ; and he that had good successe in his love, 
should light the candle; but never any man was found 
to light it. — Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy. 

Helena. (Page 61.) 
" Was this the face that launched a thousand ships 
And burnt the topless towers of Ilium? " 

Marlowe 



298 UNDER THE OLIVE. 

" The trapric poet who deceived was jiister than he 
who deceived not, and he that was deceived was wiser 
than he who was not deceived." — Plato's Gorgias. 

*' 'A theme for the minstrel.' The Odyssey gives 
us a lively picture of the minstrel (aoidos) by whom 
such songs were sung in the halls of princes. A king 
is going to make a great feast, and bids his herald, the 
chamberlain of his court, to invite ' the god-like singer; 
for to him the god has given song abundantly, to glad- 
den us.' So the chamberlain brings ' the welcome min- 
strel, whom the muse loved exceedingly, and to whom 
she gave both evil and good ; she took away his eye- 
sight, but she gave him sweet song;' he sets a chair 
for the minstrel, studded with silver nails, in the midst 
of the feasters, firm against a tall pillar, and hangs a 
clear-toned harp on a peg just above his head, and 
guides the blind man's hands to touch it; then he puts 
a table beside him, Avith food and wine. When the 
banquet is over, the minstrel sings to his harp 'the glo- 
ries of men.' Such a minstrel Avas not looked upon 
simply as an artist; he was thought to be inspired by 
the gods. And so, naturallv, he had a sacred charac- 
ter. When King Agamemnon was going away to the 
Avar at TroA'^ (the story said) he charged the minstrel of 
his house to watch over tlie honor of the Queen, Cly- 
temnestra ; and at first the wicked iEgisthus was baf- 
fled, 'for the lady Avas discreet; and, besides, the min- 
strel was present.' — R. C Jebb, Primer of Greek 
Literature. 



NOTES. 299 

"0 beauty! how fatal art thou to mortals I how 
precious to those who possess thee ! Helen is always 
the Avoman who has been!" — Euripides, The Ores- 
tes. 

" La vicillesse menie ne peut fletrir cette femme mar- 
veilleuse ; le temps n'ose point I'attaquer. Elle par- 
court I'espace d'un siecle dans le cycle de la po^sie 
antique, toujours jeune, toujours d(^'sirable. Vivante 
image de la B^aute id<f'ale, I'homme peut souiller ses 
formes ephdm^res, il n'atteint pas son type eternel." 
Paul pe Saint-Victor, Hommes et Dieux. 

Stesichorus differed especially from Homer with re- 
gard to the siege of Troy, and his famous palinodia 
about Helen gave rise to the most celebrated story 
about him. He had in the opening of a poem spoken 
disparagingly of the heroine, who struck him with 
blindness. Plato is our earliest authority for this 
legend. See Mahaffy's History of Classical Greek 
Literature 

"The identification of Demeter with Rhea Cybele is 
the motive wliich has inspired a beautiful chorus in the 
Helena, — the new Helena, of Euripides, — that great 
lover of all subtle refinements and modernisms, who, in 
this play, has worked on a strange version of the older 
story, which relates that only the phantom of Helen 
had really gone to Troy, herself remaining in Egypt 
all the time, at the court of King Proteus, where she 
is found at last by her husband Menelaus." — W. H. 
Pater. 



300 UNDER THE OLIVE. 

Herakles. (Page 79.) 
" Herakles is among the Hellenes that Spiritual 
Humanity which, hy native energy, attains Olympus 
through the twelve far-famed labors." — Hegel's PAi- 
losphy of History. 

" Nay, never falter : no great deed is done 
By falterers who ask for certainty. 
No good is certain, but the steadfast mind, 
The undivided will to seek the good : 
'T is that compels the elements, and wrings 
A human music from the indifferent air. 
The greatest gift the hero leaves his race 
Is to have been a hero. Say we fail ! — 
We feed the high tradition of the world." 

George Eliot, The Spanish Gypsey. 

" Humanity is erroneously counted among common- 
place virtues. If it deserved such a place, there would 
be less urgent need than, alas, there is for its 6.a.\\y ex- 
ercise among us. In its pale shape of kindly senti- 
ment and bland pity it is common enough, and is 
always the portion of the cultivated ; but humanity, 
armed, aggressive, and alert, never slumbering and 
never wearying, moving like ancient hero over the land 
to slay monsters, is the rarest of virtues." — John 
Mokley's Voltaire. 

" Prometheus is unbound by Hercules, the power by 
which the divine reason in the fullness of time rends 
the fetters of the creative force; and the new nuptials 
of Prometheus and Asia give birth to the new world, 



NOTES. 301 

fairer than the old. This is the ever-renewed drama of 
creation." — J, Todhunter, Shelley, a Study. 

"Herakles is, in the Greek conception of the type of 
those who work for others, one condemned by his 
destiny to achieve great, difficult, and unrewarded ex- 
ploits at the bidding of another." — Grote, vol. viii., 
chap. Ixvii. 

Artemis. (Page 91.) 
" Honoring Apollo's sister Artemis, 
The first of heayenly ones in his esteem ; 
And ever roams he in her virgin train, 
In intercourse too close for mortal man. 
Through the pale-yellow woods, with fleetest hounds. 
Scaring the wild beasts that infest the land." 
Euripides, The Crowned Hippolytus. Translated into 
English verse by Maurice Puroell Eitz-Gerald. 

"La Mythologie fait de Diane la fille de Latone, 
mais le sein qui I'a portde est plus vaste, sa conception 
plus divine encore. C'est du courant des sources, de 
la profondeur des ombrages, des bruits du vent, des 
mysteres de la solitude que Diane est sortie. Tous les 
Elements chastes de la nature, toutes les puret^s du 
corps et de I'ame se personnitient dans la grande vierge 

dorienne De quels prestiges devait remplir les 

bois sa presence secrete ! Elle sanctifiait tous leurs 
sites, elle divinisait tous leurs bruits. La brise qui 
troublait le feuillage etait peut-etre sa divine haleine. . 
Peut-etre le lac, fr^missant encore, venait-il de recevoir 
son corps virginal. Sa chasse merveilleuse enchantait 



302 UNDER THE OLIVE. 

la for^t: elle se melait a toutes ses rumeurs. . . . . 
Fuis, t^m^raire, sans retourner la tete ! d(^ja tes chiens 
te regardent d'un oeil soup^onneux." — Paul de 
Saint-Victor, Homines et Dieux. 

Antinous. (Page 99.) 

"The Natural, as explained by men, — i. e., its inter- 
nal element, — is as a universal principle the beginning 
of the Divine." — Hegel's Pliilosophy of History. 

"In Greek beauty the Sensuous is only a sign, an 
expression, an envelope, in which Spirit manifests it- 
self." — The Same. 

"Nothing that is truly beautiful externally is inter- 
nally deformed. For everything which is externally 
beautiful is so in consequence of the domination of in- 
ward beauty." — Plotinus. 

Fichte says: " All culture must proceed from the will^ 
not from the understanding ; . . . . Man does not con- 
sist of two beings ; he is absolutely one ; .... as is 
the heart of the individual, so is his knowledge." 
" Ich halte nichts von dem, der von sich denkt, 
Wie ihn das Volk vielleicht erheben mdchte. 
Allein, Jungliug, dauke du den Gottern, 
Dass sie so friih durch dich so viel gethan." 

Goethe's Iphegenie. 

" Aime et tu renaitras : fais-toi fleiir pour eclore." 

Alfred de Musset. 

"Antiuous, as he appears in sculpture, is a young 



NOTES. 303 

man of eighteen or nineteen years, almost faultless in 
his form. His beauty is not of a pure Greek type. 
Though perfectly proportioned and developed by gym- 
nastic exercises to the true athletic fullness, his limbs 
are round and florid, suggesting the possibility of early 

overripeness The whole body combines Greek 

beauty of structure with something of Oriental volup- 
tuousness. The same fusion of diverse elements may 
be traced in the head. It is not too large, though more 
than usually broad, and is nobly set upon a massive 
throat, slightly inclined forward, as though this posture 
were habitual; the hair lies thick in clusters, which 
only form curls at the tips. The forehead is low and 
somewhat square ; the eyebrows are level, of a peculiar 
shape, and very thick, converging so closely as almost 
to meet above the deep-cut eyes. The nose is straight, 
but blunter than is consistent with the Greek ideal. 
Both cheeks and chin are delicately formed, but fuller 
than a severe taste approves; one might trace in their 
rounded contours either a survival of infantine inno- 
cence and immaturity, or else the sign of rapidly ap- 
proaching over-bloom. The mouth is one of the love- 
liest ever carved ; but here, again, the blending of the 
Greek and Oriental types is visible. The lips, half 
parted, seem to pout; and the distance between mouth 
and nostrils is exceptionally short. The undefinable 
expression of the lips, together with the weight of the 
brows and slumberous half-closed eyes, gives a look of 
ulkiness or voluptuousness to the whole face. This, 



304 UNDER THE OLIVE. 

I fancy, is the first impression which the portraits of 
AntinoHs produce; and Shelley has well conveyed it 
by placing the two following^ phrases, ' eager and im- 
passioned tenderness' and 'effeminate sullenness ' in 
close juxtaposition. But after long familiarity with 
the whole range of Antinous's portraits, and after study 
of his life, we are brought to read the peculiar expres- 
sion of his face and form somewhat differently. A 
prevailing melancholy, sweetness of temperament, over- 
shadowed by resignation, brooding reverie, the inno- 
cence of youth touched and saddened by a calm resolve 
or an accepted doom, — such are the sentences we form 
to give distinctness to a still vague and uncertain im- 
pression One thing, however, is certain ; we 

have before us no figment of the artistic imagination, 
but a real youth of incomparable beauty, just as nature 
made him, with all the inscrutableness of undeveloped 
character, with all the pathos of a most untimely doom, 
with the almost imperceptible imperfections that ren- 
der choice reality more permanently charming than 

the ideal 

"But who was Antinous, and what is known of 
him? .... He first appears upon the scene as Ha- 
drian's friend. Whether the emperor met with him 
during his travels in Asia Minor, whether he found 
him among the students of the university at Athens, 
or whether the boy had been sent to Rome in his child- 
hood, must remain matter of the merest conjecture 

After journeying through Greece, Asia Minor, Syria, 



NOTES. 305 

Palestine, and Arabia, Hadrian, attended by Antinous, 

came to Egypt When he had arrived near an 

ancient city named Besa, on the right bank of the river, 
he lost his friend. Antinous was drowned in the Nile. 
He had thrown himself, it was believed, into the water; 
seeking thus by a voluntary death to substitute his 
own life for Hadrian's, and to avert predicted perils 
from the Roman Empire." —J. Addington Symonds, 
Sketches and Studies in Southern Europe. 

" Let me feel that I am to be a lover. I am to see 
to it that the world is better for me and to find my re- 
ward in the act. Love would put a new face on this 
weary old world, in which we dwell as pagans and ene- 
mies too long; and it would warm the heart to see 
how fast the vain diplomacy of statesmen, the impo- 
tence of armies, and navies, and lines of defense, 
would be superseded by this unarmed child." — R. W. 
Emerson. 

" Life, I repeat, is energy of love 
Divine or liuman ; exercised in pain, 
In strife and tribulation ; and ordained, 
If so approved and sanctified, to pass 
Througli shades and silent rest, to endless joy." 
William Wordsworth. 

" Call it Truth or Summer going forth; seeming to 
walk miraculously on the surface, but supported by a 
power which has reached firm footing ; balancing him- 
self gracefully, maybe a long, long time; but never 
getting anywhere until he has made his dive into the 
20 



306 UNDER THE OLIVE. 

unknown. — A ripple closes over us." —From a letter 
by William M. Hunt, describing his picture called 
"The Bather." 

Achilles. (Page 107. ) 
"The Iliad has for its whole subject the 'Passion of 
Achilles ' — that ardent energy of the hero Avhich dis- 
played itself first as anger against Agamemnon, and 
afterwards as love for the lost Patroclus. The truth of 
this was perceived by one of the greatest poets and pro- 
foundest critics of the modern world, Dante. When 
Dante, in the Inferno, wished to describe Achilles he 
wrote, with characteristic brevity : — 
" ' Achille 
Che per amore al fine combatteo.' 

"The wrath of Achilles against Agamemnon which 
prevented him from fighting; the love of Achilles, 
passing the love of women, for Patroclus, which in- 
duced him to forego his anger and to fight at last; 
these are the two poles on which the Hind turns." — 
J. Addixgton Symonus. 

" The highest form that floated before the Greek 
imagination was Achilles, the son of the poet, the 
Homeric j'outh of the Trojan war. Homer is the ele- 
ment in which the Greek world lives as man does in 
the air. The Greek life is a truly youthful achieve- 
ment. Achilles, the ideal youth of poetry, began it; 
Alexander the Great, the ideal youth of reality, con- 
cluded it. Both appear in contest Avith Asia." — He- 
gel's Philosophy of History. 



NOTES. 307 

" Wem die Himmlischen viel Verwirning zugedacht 
haben, wem sie erschiitternde, schnelle Wechsel der 
Freude und des Schmerzens bereiten, dem geben sie 
kein hijher Geschenk als einen ruhigen Freund." — • 
Goethe's fphigenie. 

"Parle avec confiance ; 
Le severe Dieu silence 
Est un des freres de la Mort ; 
En se plaignant on sc console, 
Et quelquefois une parole 
Nous a ddlivr«5 d'un remords." 

Alfred de Musset. 

*' In the world secular business demands accomplish- 
ment, and ultimatel}^ the discovery is made that spirit 
finds the goal of its struggle and its harmonization in 
that very sphere which it made the object of its resist- 
ance, — it finds that sectdar pursuits are a spiritual 
occupation." — Hegel's Philosophy of History. 

" Wliat is it that gives to each individual the pecul- 
iar character of his particular life V I ansAver, it is the 
love of this particular and individual life. Show me 
what thou truly lovest, what thou seekest and strivest 
for with thy whole heart when thou wouldst attain to 
true enjoyment of thyself, — and thou hast thereby 
shown me thy life. . • . That to many men it may be 
no easy matter to answer such a question, since they 
do not even know what thej' love, proves only that 
they do not in reality love anything; and just on that 
account do they not live because they do not love." 
FiCHTE, The Blessedness of life. 



308 UNDER THE OLIVE. 

Aphrodite of Melos. (Page 115.) 
•' Volge sua sfera e beata si gode." 

Dante. 
" And in thy face 
I see, astonied, that severe content 
Which comes of thought and musing." 

Keats' Hyperion. 
" My daughter, Venus is not Love alone, 
But many a title 'longs to her beside. 
She is deep Hades ; she is deathless Eoice, 
And she is maddening Frenzy ; she 's Desire 
Unmiugled ; she is Mourning ; all 's in her 
That 's eager, that is tranquil, that 's perverse. 
For she invades each bosom that hath lodged 
A soul. What heart is not this goddess' prey ? " 

Attributed to Euripides. 
" Piety is no end or aim, it is a means by which, 
through the purest tranquillity of mind, the highest 
culture is attained." — Goethe's Spriiche in Prosa. 
" Beauty, old, yet ever new I 

Eternal Voice and inward Word, 
The Logos of the Greek and Jew, 
The old sphere-music which the Samian heard ! 

" Nor bounds, nor clime, nor creed thou know'st, 
Wide as our need thy favors fall ; 
The white wings of the Holy Ghost 

Stoop, seen or unseen, o'er the heads of all." 

Whittieb. 

" Nothing so lifts a man from all his mean imprison- 
ments, were it but for moments, as true admiration." 
Thomas Carlyle. 



NOTES. 309 

"The lave of beauty is nothing different from that 
first and leading motive in all minds to the pursuit of 
everything, namely, that motive whence the philoso- 
pher sets out in his inquiry after wisdom, the desire of 
good. Thus the perfection of man consists in his simil- 
itude to this supreme beauty ; and in his union with it 
is found his supreme good." — Floyer Sydenham. 

" It is not the transient breath of poetic license that 

women want; each can receive that from a lover 

It is the birthright of every being capable to receive it, 
— the freedom, the religious, intelligent freedom, of the 
universe, to use its means, to learn its secrets as far as 
nature has enabled them, with God alone for their 

guide and their judge We would have every 

arbitrary barrier thrown down. We would have every 
path thrown open as freely to woman as to man. Were 
this done, and the slight temporary fermentation al- 
lowed to subside, we believe that the divine would as- 
cend into nature to a height unknown in the history 
of past ages: and nature, thus instructed, would regu- 
late the spheres, not only so as to avoid collision, but 
to bring forth ravishing harmony." — Margaret Ful- 
ler. 

"Cette Y(^nus n'est pas la Cypris frivole d'Anacreon 
et d'Ovide, celle qui forme 1' Amour aux ruses erotiques, 
et a laquelle on immole les oiseaux lascifs. C'est 
la V^nus Celeste, la Venus Victorieuse, toujours d^- 
sir^e, jamais posse'd(fe, absolue comme la vie, dont le 
feu centrale reside dans son sein ; invincible comme 



310 UNDER THE OLIVE. 

I'attrait des sexes auquel elle prt^side, chaste comme 
rEteriielle Beauty, qu'elle personifie. C'est la V^nus 
qu'adorait Platon, et dont C(5sar donnait le nom — Ve- 
nus Victrix — pour mot d'ordre a son arm^e, la veille 
de Pharsale. Elle est la flamme qui cree et qui con- 
serve, rinstigatrlce des grandes choses et des projets 
heroiques. Ce qu'il y a de pur dans les affections ter- 
restres, I'amedes sens, l'<?tince]le creatrice, la particule 
sublime nieloe a ralliage des passions grossieres, tout 
cela lui appavtient de plein droit. Le teste revient aux 
Venus vulgaires, copies profanees de son type qui se 
parent de ses attributs et usurpent son pi(^destal. Quel- 
ques-uns croient que son pied mutile reposait sur un 
globe; ce synibole completerait sa grandeur. Les as- 
tres gravitent en cadence autour de la Venus c(^leste, 
et le monde roule harmonieusement sous son pied." — 
Paul de Saint- Victor, Homines et Dieux. 

Elkgy to Daphkis. (Page 131.) 
"True enjoyment consists in those pure delights 
which do not arise after pain, but which the soul ex- 
periences when filled with the contemplation of true 
being." — Plato's RepuUic. 

" When we proximately accede to that which cannot 
be impelled, then we shall imitate the soul of the uni- 
verse, and the so>ul of the stars, and, becoming near 
through similitude, we shall hasten to be one and the 
same with them." — Plotinus. 

"Nothing, which is comprehended in being, per- 
ishes." — Plotinus. 



NOTES. 311 

"This, therefore, is the life of the gods and of di- 
vine and happy men, a liberation from all terrene con- 
cerns, a life unaccompanied with human pleasures, and 
a flight of the alone to the alone." — Plotinus. 
" Bards of Passion and of Mirth, 
Ye hare left your souls on earth 1 
Ye have souls in heaven too, 
Double-lived in regions new I " 

John Keats. 

Persephone. (Page 139.) 

" Wer jung die Erde verlassen 
Wandelt auf ewig jung im Reiche Persephoneia"s 
Ewig erscheint er jung den Kunftigen, ewig ersehnet." 
Goethe's Achilleis. 

"The central expression of the story of Demeter and 
Persephone is the Homeric hymn to which Grote as- 
signs a date at least as earlj"^ as six hundred years before 
Clirist. The one survivor of a whole fliglit of hymns 
on this subject, it was written perhaps for one of those 
contests which took place on the seventh day of the 
Eleusinian festival, and in which a bunch of ears of 
corn was the prize; perhaps for actual use in the mys- 
teries themselves by the Hierophantes or Interpreter, 
who showed to the worshipers at Eleusis those sacred 
places to which the poem contains so many references. 
.... What follows is an extract from an abbreviated 
version of this hymn." 

** I begin the song of Demeter," says the prize-poet, 



312 UNDER THE OLIVE. 

or the Interpreter of the holy places, "the song of 
Demeterand her daughter Persephone, whom Aidoneus 
carried away, by the consent of Zeus, as she played, 
apart from her mother, with the deep-bosomed daugh- 
ters of the Ocean, gathering flowers in a meadow of soft 
grass, roses, and the crocus, and fair violets, and flags, 
and hyacinths, and, above all, the strange flower of the 
Narcissus, which the Earth, favoring the desire of Ai- 
doneus, brought forth for the first time, to snare the 
footsteps of the flower-like girl. A hundred heads of 
blossom grew up from the roots of it, and the skj^ and 
the earth and the salt sea were glad at the scent thereof. 
She stretched forth her hand to take the flower ; then 
the earth opened, and the king of the great nation of 

the dead sprang out with his immortal horses 

"Demeter sent upon the earth, in her anger, a year 
of grievous famine. The dry seed remained hidden in 
the soil ; in vain the oxen drew the ploughshare through 
the furrows; much white seed-corn fell fruitless on the 
earth, and the whole human race had like to have per- 
ished, and the gods had no more service of men, unless 
Zeus had interfered. First he sent Iris, afterwards all 
the gods, one by one, to turn Demeter from her anger; 
but none was able to persuade her; she heard their 
words with a hard countenance, and vowed by no 
means to return to Ol3'mpus, nor to yield the fruit of 
the earth, until her eyes had seen her lost daughter 
again. Then, last of all, Zeus sent Hermes into the 
kingdom of the dead, to persuade Aidoneus to suffer 



NOTES. 313 

his bride to return to the light of day. And Hermes 
found the king at home in his palace, sitting on a 
couch, beside the shrinking Persephone, consumed 
within herself by desire for her mother. A doubtful 
smile passed over the face of Aidoneus ; yet he obeyed 
the message, and bade Persephone return ; yet praying 
her a little to have gentle thoughts of him, nor judge 
him too hardly, who was also an immortal god. And 
Persephone arose up quickly in great joy; but before 
she departed, he caused her to eat a morsel of sweet 
pomegranate, designing secretly thereby that she should 
not remain always upon earth, but might sometime re- 
turn to him. And Aidoneus yoked the horses to his 
chariot; and Persephone ascended into it; and Hermes 
took the reins in his hands and drove out through the 
infernal halls; and the horses ran willingly; and they 
two quickly passed over the ways of that long journey, 
neither the waters of the sea, nor of the rivers, nor the 
deep ravines of the hills, nor the cliffs of the shore, 
resisting them; till at last Hermes placed Persephone 
before the door of the temple where her mother was; 
who, seeing her, ran out quickly to meet her, like a 
maenad coming dovyn a mountain-side dusky with 

woods So Demeter suffered the earth to yield 

its fruits once more, and the land was suddenly laden 
with leaves and flowers and waving corn. Perseph- 
one also visited the princes of Eleusis and instructed 
them in the performance of her sacred rites, — those 
mysteries of which no tongue may speak. Only, 



314 UNDER THE OLIVE. 

blessed is he whose eves have seen them ; his lot after 
death is not as that of other men ! " — From the Myth 
of Demeter and Persephone, by W. H. Pater. 

"In three lines of the Theoyony we find the stealing 
of Persephone by A'idoneus, one of those things in 
Hesiod, perhaps, which are real)}' older than Homer. 
Hesiod has been called the poet of helots, and is thought 
to have preserved some of the traditions of those earlier 
inhabitants of Greece who had become a kind of serfs; 
and in a certain shadowiness in his conception of the 
gods, contrasting with the concrete and heroic forms 
of the gods of Homer, we may perhaps trace something 
of the quiet brooding of a subdued people, — of that 
dreamy temper to which the story of Persephone prop- 
erly belongs. However this may be, it is in Hesiod 
that the two images, divided in Homer, the goddess of 
summer and the goddess of death, — Kore and Perseph- 
one, — are identified with much significance, and that 
strange dual being makes her first appearance, whose 
latent capabilities the poets afterwards developed, 
among the rest, a peculiar blending of those two con- 
trasted aspects, full of purpose for the duly chastened 
intelligence. Aioahe, and sing, ye that, dwell in the 
dust.'' — The Same. 

"There is an attractiveness in these goddesses of the 
earth akin to the influence of cool places, quiet hours, 
subdued light, tranquillizing voices. . . . This myth 
illustrates the power of the Greek religion as a religion 
of pure ideas, of conceptions, which, having no link on 



NOTES. 315 

historical fact, yet because they arose naturally out of 
the spirit of man, and embodied, in adequate symbols, 
his deepest thoughts concerning the conditions of his 
physical and spiritual life, maintained their hold 
through many changes, and are still not without a 
solemnizing power even for the modern mind, which 
has once admitted them as recognized and habitual 
inhabitants; and abiding thus for the elevation and 
purifying of our sentiments, long after the earlier and 
simpler races of their worshipers have passed away, 
they may be a pledge to us of the place in our culture, 
at once legitimate and possible, of the associations, the 
conceptions, the imagery, of Greek religious poetry in 
general, — of the poetry of all religions." — The Same. 

Pandora. (Page 197.) 

Mr. Symonds renders thus succinctly the story of 
Pandora as given by Hesiod. 

"Work," he says "is necessary for men, because 
Zeus has concealed and hidden far away our means of 
livelihood, so that we are forced to toil and suffer in 
the search for sustenance. In old days the human 
race had fire, and offered burnt sacrifice to heaven; 
but Prometheus by his craft deceived the gods of their 
just portion of the victims, making Zeus take the bones 
and fat for his share. Whereupon Zeus deprived men 
of the use of fire. Prometheus then stole fire from 
heaven and gave it back to men. Then was cloud- 
gathering Zeus full wroth of heart, and he devised a 



316 UNDER THE OLIVE. 

great woe for all mankind. He bade Hephaistos mix 
earth and water, and infuse into the plastic form a hu- 
man voice and human powers, and liken it in all points 
to a heavenly goddess. Athene was told to teach the 
woman thus made household work and skill in weav- 
ing. Aphrodite poured upon her head the charm of 
beauty, with terrible desire, and flesh-consuming 
thoughts of love. But Zeus commanded Hermes to 
give to her the mind of a dog and wily temper. After 

this fashion was the making of Pandora Then 

Pandora was sent under the charge of Hermes to Epi- 
metheus, who remembered not his brother's words, 
how he had said : ' Receive no gift from Zeus but 
send it back again, lest evil should befall the race 
of men.' .... 

"Just as Prometheus signifies the forecasting reason 
of humanity, so Epimetheus indicates the overhasty 
judgment foredoomed to be wise too late. These are 
intellectual qualities," — J. Addington Symonds. 

The translator cannot print this version of Goethe's 
poem without one word of gratitude to Bayard Taylor. 
It was his reference to Goethe's Pandora, in a paper 
written from Weimar some years since, which first 
called her attention to it, and it was his patient revis- 
ion of her translation, a few years later, which first 
suggested the idea of giving it to the public. The 
beautiful line, "Depth of shade and love's inviolate 
longing" is Bayard Taylor's, 

" Ein grosseres Werk begann Goethe 1807 fiir die Zeit- 



NOTES. 317 

SGhnii Prometheus des befreundeten Leo v. Seckendorf, 
fiir dessen Neujahrstaschenbuch auf 1801 Goethe ehe- 
mals seinen Palaophron imd Neoterpe mitgetheilt. Er 
sagte auf den Wunsch des Herausgebers einen Beitrag 
zu, und wahlte Pandora's WiederhuTift, wiederum 
wie das Vorspiel in antiken Trimetern, die ihm so viel 
Miihe machten, dass er nicht iiber Pandoren's abschied 
hinauskam. ' Wenn es mir so viel Miihe macht,' 
scherzt er in einem Briefe an Frau v. Stein, 'sie Avieder 
herbeizuholen, alsesmirverursachte, sie fortzuschaffen, 
so weiss ich nicht, wann Avir sie wiedersehen werden.' 
So war es. Die Gestalten selbst traten ihm in die Feme 
und er verwundete sich iiber das Titanische, wenu er 
spater wieder hinein sah." — Goethe's Werke, Erster 
Band, Stuttgart, 1866, p. cli. 



